


Tell Me All About It

by queenofquiet17



Category: Will & Grace
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, I just really hate Leo, Lesbian Sex, Original Series and Revival, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 61,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17876771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofquiet17/pseuds/queenofquiet17
Summary: There was something in the redhead’s eyes that Karen couldn’t quite place. But then Grace’s laugh broke the silence and her concentration, and Karen felt her lips start to curl into a curious smile. “Did you know you’re the only person who’s always there for me?” Grace asked, as if she had just made some huge realization.“Oh, come on, Gracie, that is such a lie! Will’s there for you.”Grace shook her head. “Not the way you are. He tends to sugarcoat things to make me feel better. You always tell me the truth. You make the truth feel safe.” She paused for a moment like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to say what was in her head. “You makemefeel safe.”For as long as they've known each other, Karen was the one Grace went to with her relationship troubles. When Leo Markus came along, Karen instantly hated him. But as time went on, and she helped Grace through all of the things Leo put her through, she started to realize her reasons for hating him went deeper than she thought. And she started to realize her own feelings for Grace.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the deal: I hate Leo. He's the worst, and you can't convince me otherwise. BUT he did prove to be a really good jumping off point for this fic, so I guess there's a silver lining. This story was a journey, and I am so thankful to my usual suspects for taking the ride with me. [Bookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntledkittenface), [Kim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimmieRocks), Shannon, I love you all and thank you for being so game for this. And thank you for hating Leo as much as I do <3
> 
> This fic is based off of the song ["Did Your Broken Heart Make You Who You Are?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkunxG4ony8) by Franz Nicolay. Lyrics from the song open most of the chapters.

_ 2002 _

“Can I talk to you about something?”

The question had been asked so many times over the years, it didn’t take long to catch onto the cues, to know exactly where she was going with this. The way she sighed as though she was about to go through with a last resort. The way she closed her eyes as if bracing herself for the worst. The way she would tiptoe around the issue for a few moments before finally getting to the point. It happened whenever she was thinking about getting serious, whenever she had already gotten serious but was starting to have second thoughts. It happened whenever she was looking for a way out. Every single time she asked, she made it sound like this was a bad idea, like she already regretted asking before the answer had even been given. 

But every single time, there was something in her eyes that looked like trust. And after five years, Karen resigned herself to the fact that she would never be immune to it.

At some point in every relationship she had in the time she knew Karen, Grace would come to her for an honest opinion. Karen could acknowledge that she wasn’t great at it at first; she hadn’t known Grace well enough yet to give any real thought to Danny and how bad of a match he really was. But she got better as she got to know her. She didn’t know where the hell Grace found Josh, and she gladly told her so; Grace seemed more annoyed than anything when she was with him. She liked seeing Grace so happy with Ben, even if she wasn’t sure how either of them would fit in the other’s world in the long run. And then there was Nathan. God, she was so sure about Nathan. He was quirky and fun, and she was positive that the one Grace never thought she’d go for would be the one who stuck. They did the I love yous. They were living together, and he and Will hadn’t killed each other. He got along with everyone; there was a balance. It all seemed so imperfectly perfect, finding happiness inside of the unexpected.

She couldn’t believe she had been wrong about him. She knew Grace couldn’t believe it, either.

Karen wasn’t entirely sure what happened to cause such a dramatic turn to happen so quickly. But she saw the aftermath, and she couldn’t stand it. The way Grace just shut down after he ended things. Locked in her room for three days. No light, no appetite. Cycling through old photographs, convinced she was going to find the part of her past that ended up dictating her present. Her clothes were stale, her hair was a tangled nest of red, and she looked at Karen like she was so tired of crying but didn’t know what else to do. It was jarring to see her like that, when Karen was so used to the vibrant, passionate woman she had come to know and love. She never wanted Grace to hurt that way again.

So if she had to give a little advice from time to time, just to make sure Grace wouldn’t hurt like that, that’s what she was going to do.

Karen never did understand why Grace thought she could help. She could only assume it was because she’s been married to Stan for so long; she just wished Grace could see that the key to her long marriage was distance. The less she knew about Stanley’s comings and goings, the longer they were going to last; it was that simple. It wasn’t a flawless plan--she had to suck it up when Stan did things that landed him in prison, suggested things like sleeping around while he stayed in prison. And she had to live with the fact that she became a person who considered things like sleeping around while her husband stayed in prison--but it worked, somehow. It just didn’t make her a viable candidate for guidance. She had no real, meaningful words of wisdom to offer Grace. She had no anecdotes, no constructive examples from her marriage that would shine any kind of light. What exactly would she say? Stan throws money at his problems; Karen drinks away hers. She didn’t know the first thing about healthy relationships.

But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try, if it meant she could ease Grace’s mind.

She couldn’t help but become protective of the redhead over the years; but when she thought about it, it was only natural. Grace deserved better than the men she usually dated, but she almost never sought it out. And then after a few months of the charade, after the flirting and the looks and that thing she always did where she’d toss her hair when she laughed, even if she was talking to him over the phone, she would realize she was wasting her time. Or she would get blindsided by the revelation that he wasn’t on the same page as she was. Or some strange combination of the two. And the question would change from being about the relationship to being about how to move on from the relationship. How to process it all. How to stop hurting. How to get over the embarrassment. How to live with a bad decision.

There was something else, too, something that peeked its head around the corner every once in a while when they were alone. That girl’s night early in their friendship, with a little too much tequila, when she woke up with Grace’s clothes on her body and Grace’s body resting gently on top of her. The morning after she first visited Stan in prison, waking up to find Grace beside her because she didn’t want to be alone. It made her think that if there was ever a time when Grace tossed her hair and laughed in her direction, she’d probably give in. Because Karen had to be honest; it  _ was _ kind of endearing.

Then, of course, there was that kiss, the one that was supposed to prove just how deep in it Grace was with this new guy. It was her own fault for pushing it that far; she just didn’t think Grace would actually go for it. But then the redhead took her face into her hands. But then the redhead’s lips collided with her own. But then the redhead made her weak in the knees and follow the taste of that kiss even after Grace pulled away. Karen played it off like it was nothing, joked about how Grace was screwed even though she was secretly questioning if she joked about the right person, if she was joking at all. The kiss didn’t seem to set off the same things in Grace that it did in her. But maybe it was a show. Maybe she was better at saving face than Karen thought she was. Maybe she was waiting for a sign that it was okay. Maybe Karen was kidding herself.

Maybes made Karen crazy. It was better if she didn’t think about it.

And now, here they were, about to start the cycle again, with a question that would have sounded so innocent if it weren’t for the memory of every other time it had been asked.  _ Can I talk to you about something?  _ Karen saw Grace fidgeting in front of her, pursing her lips, wringing her hands, letting her gaze fall to the ground like the weight of the question was too heavy for her to keep her head up. She knew this dance. She knew to let her make these moves, get a little more comfortable, work up her nerve. 

“Look, I wouldn’t normally bother you with this,” Grace finally said, even though they both knew by now that it was a lie. “But Will and I are still...recovering, I guess. Leo’s a sensitive subject right now. I just need someone to talk to.”

Leo. The man who rode in on a white horse to blind Grace from the path she thought she wanted, one she would have taken with Will, one that would have welcomed a tiny new member into their family (good lord, where was the question for  _ that _ subject? She would have been able to save everyone a lot of trouble). The fact that she thought she had to hide his existence from Will at all should have been a red flag. The fact that she was so torn up about keeping up the secret should have made her think twice. Karen wasn’t sure if Grace was still seeing him because she liked him, or because he caused such a huge rift in her world that to give up now would have made everything that came before it pointless. And she wasn’t sure if Grace even figured out her reasons yet.

Which made it the perfect time to ask her question.

Until now, Karen could group each guy’s problems into one pile full of similarities. It was almost like a bargain bin compilation record, full of songs that all sounded the same and clearly weren’t worth it. But she would make her way through each track whenever Grace asked her to. There was Danny’s “Sad Songs for Childish Lovers,” filled with one hundred different ways to express how immature he was. Josh’s soundtrack was packed with songs that were gentle and awkward, because that’s all their relationship was. Sometimes, Karen swore she could see Grace physically struggle to come up with reasons why she was sticking with him. Her problems with Ben were scored by something that sounded too ambitious for its own good. And Nathan...well. Those songs always sounded chaotically hopeful. Until he stopped playing them altogether.

Karen could only imagine what kind of problems Grace would come to her with, when it came to Leo. Which songs would be put on repeat. How many times they would study the lyrics until they started to make sense. She couldn’t get a solid read on him, even when she tried. God, this guy better be worth it.

But she doubted it.

She just didn’t get a good feeling from him. She thought he was smug when he had absolutely no room to be. She didn’t think he was nearly as funny as he thought he was. He got too comfortable too quickly, especially when the redhead was still on the mend with her best friend. She was hoping that Grace could eventually feel it, too, once the newness of it all faded and she was left with a prince who was less than charming. But until then, she would do what she always did whenever the question was asked.

“Well, sure, honey,” she said as she watched Grace pull a chair up to her desk. She rested her chin on her hand and offered up the same smile she always did when the redhead asked for an ear. “Tell me all about it.” She saw Grace take a breath like she needed a spare moment to collect her thoughts. And as she listened to Grace start to pour her heart out, Karen wondered how long it would take for Leo to let her down, putting on a smile to hide all the doubts history created in her mind.

It would all play itself out soon enough; of that, she was sure. There was no way Leo Markus was going to last.


	2. Sad Songs for Sullen Lovers

_**“I put on a record,** _   
_**It was called ‘Sad Songs for Sullen Lovers’** _   
_**I listened to it once,** _   
_**It took me all day to recover”** _

_ 2002 _

She wished she had said something sooner.

There had been opportunities to speak her mind that Karen just didn’t take. She heard Grace tell the story of how Leo tricked her into meeting his parents when she wasn’t ready, and she bit her tongue because the redhead looked so damn happy when she told Karen that the whole thing ended in the first “I love you.” She saw how Grace started to spiral after that impromptu wedding in Central Park as she realized she knew nothing about the man she just married, and Karen stopped herself from running after her because she knew she would probably just make everything worse. She watched Grace plan her real wedding every chance she got, and Karen tried to swallow the thought that the way the first attempt ended should have been taken as a sign. She knew she was being a terrible friend; it would have been so easy to simply say something, if it saved the redhead a lifetime of heartache.

Every time she had thought about saying something, though, she could hear Grace’s response in her head, defensive, shrugging off the concern.  _ You’re just thinking about your own situation. Leo and I are fine. _ And maybe she  _ was _ thinking about her own situation and projecting. But if it meant that Grace didn’t have to go through the things she was going through now, was that really such a bad thing?

Then again, it wasn’t like her mind could focus on much else besides her own misfortune lately.

Stanley couldn’t throw his money at his problems while he was in prison. So he threw himself into an affair with a cafeteria worker instead. Karen wasn’t going to pretend like she hadn’t thought about stepping outside of their marriage after Stan told her it was okay to, but she just knew that he was using that proposition to defend himself, to make himself feel a little less guilty. But she wanted to know what stopped him from feeling guilty as she started packing up her things. She wanted to know what made him okay with freezing all her assets and making her live in her limo, what made him finally grow a conscience and give her something to survive on. She wanted to know if he had second thoughts. She wanted to know if that woman was truly worth throwing away all of those years they spent together.

Grace and Leo were getting closer and closer as Karen and Stan were running further and further away from each other. The dark haired woman was catching her breath while the redhead picked up her pace. Then the next thing Karen knew, she was sitting next to Jack in a synagogue, listening to Grace say “I do” in front of her nearest and dearest, watching her kiss her new husband as everyone around them cheered them on.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

Once the reception was in full swing, Karen found an empty space at the bar and promptly set up shop. She fought it off with a half-hearted smile every time Jack tugged on her arm to get her out on the dance floor, studied the look of disappointment that flashed across his face for a millisecond before finding someone with a little more energy to pay attention to. She saw Will across the room, invested in a conversation with Joe and Larry that must have been hilarious, although she couldn’t imagine what any of them could have said that would warrant that deep of a laugh. And then there was Grace, her fingers woven together with Leo’s as they talked to someone Karen could see Grace didn’t know; the redhead always had a tell when she was trying to put a name to a face. Everyone looked happy. Everyone seemed to be having fun.

Good lord, she needed a drink.

Karen sighed as the bartender slid a martini towards her. She brought the glass to her lips and wondered if her ambivalence was because of her separation from Stan or because of the fact that she’d now have to put up with Leo for the long haul. Maybe a little bit of both. For a fleeting moment, she considered sneaking out of the party and retreating to her suite at the Palace where she could drink in peace. But she knew she could never do that to Grace. It was the redhead’s day; that’s all that mattered. She swirled the olives around her glass, getting lost enough in the circular motion that it distracted her. If she could just stay where she was, maybe she could make it through the night.

“I should have known I’d find you here.”

Karen snapped back into reality to find a smiling Grace pulling herself onto the empty seat next to her as she asked for another glass of champagne. She couldn’t help but crack a smile as Grace tried in vain to rein in the skirt of her dress so it wouldn’t take up so much space. “Honey, what are you doing? This is your party, you should be out there with your husband.” God, that word sounded so strange when it was attached to the redhead.

“It’s my party, and I want to sit here with you.” Grace covered Karen’s hand with her own for a moment, smiling when Karen started linking their fingers together. “Besides, I just spent ten minutes pretending to care about what’s-her-name’s kid’s last soccer game. I deserve a drink.” She grabbed the glass the second it hit the bar and downed half of it in one gulp.

Karen turned to look out into the crowd, furrowing her brow as she scanned the faces. “Which what’s-her-name?” she asked.

Grace’s eyes swept across the room a couple times, trying to pinpoint the woman she had just been talking to. “Oh my god,” she breathed helplessly. “I don’t even know.” The dark haired woman laughed into her martini and could see Grace’s body start to relax. “Was it like this for you?” the redhead asked before Karen saw her wince. She knew Grace didn’t mean any harm by it. But it was still hard to think about happier times with Stan. Hell, it was hard to believe that at one point, there  _ were _ good times with Stan. She put on a smile and tried to shake it off.

“Which time?” Karen joked, even though she knew Grace could see right through her. She shrugged and sighed. “I didn’t really have anyone I cared enough about to invite, so Stan took care of the guest list. Which meant that I knew about five people there. And that’s a generous estimate. It was a night of smiling and nodding and trying to find the fastest way to the bar.”

“So I’m in good company, then.” Grace’s eyes were trained on the dark haired woman for a moment. Karen liked to tell everyone that she didn’t do emotions. But that didn’t mean that over the years, she didn’t see how the redhead had caught on to some of her tells that proved otherwise. Karen always appreciated the fact that Grace never really called attention to it. But tonight was different. They had never experienced a night like tonight before. And all the rules they silently built up over the years seemed to have been thrown out the window. “Listen, I really appreciate you being here tonight,” the redhead said.

“Well, why wouldn’t I be here, honey? You’re my best girl.”

Grace smirked. “I thought Jack was your best girl.”

Karen put her finger to her lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell him.” She gave Grace’s hand a tiny squeeze, as if they had a reason to be this conspiratorial. She met Grace’s gaze and could tell that she was keeping something inside--out of politeness, out of embarrassment, out of whatever--and could almost sense the words bubbling to her friend’s surface. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear them, but she certainly didn’t want Grace burdened by them. Not on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.

Grace kept her eyes trained on her champagne flute as she took a breath. “It’s just...I know this is probably hard for you right now, with everything you’re going through, and I don’t blame you if you want to leave or something. I’m not going to hold it against you, I’m sure there are a million other things you could be doing right now, and--”

“Gracie, no. Don’t do that.” It was the last thing Karen wanted, to see the redhead on her wedding day being so concerned about things that didn’t matter. She liked to think she had a handle on her own problems that was tight enough not to let them show. And now, she wasn’t sure which was worse; the guilt Grace felt over these problems, or her own anger over her inability to keep these things to herself. “Honey, you just got married. For real this time.” She saw Grace crack a smile and started to feel a little better. “That’s a huge deal. You don’t have to feel bad for enjoying yourself tonight. And you don’t have to keep sitting here with me like I’m a charity case. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not a charity case,” Grace said, her gaze so focused on Karen it took the dark haired woman by surprise. “You’re my best girl.”

Karen marveled at how good her own words sounded with Grace’s voice wrapped around them. “I thought Wilma was your best girl,” she teased.

Grace leaned in close, her champagne breath dancing along Karen’s skin. “Shhh. Don’t tell him.” She pressed her lips to Karen’s cheek before she settled her head on the dark haired woman’s shoulder. Karen relaxed underneath the weight of her, calm, safe. She drained the last of her martini as she watched Grace sip the rest of her champagne and signaled the bartender for another round. They sat there, huddled together in a comfortable silence while the party moved on without them, and suddenly Karen started wondering how many chances they’d have to be together like this, now that Grace had gotten married. Of course, they would see each other at work. There was always that. But Karen wasn’t stupid; she knew that newlywed bliss trumped a drink with the assistant. And even when it didn’t, who knew if she would ever be able to get the redhead alone again. Leo was part of the package now. She had to act like she was fine with it for Grace’s sake, and she hoped she did a better job of that than she did of acting like her problems didn’t bother her. She had had enough change these last few months to learn to get used to it. But the thought of anything about her relationship with Grace changing in the slightest...that was something she didn’t think she could live with.

Her heart felt so heavy at the thought of it, so...jealous? Was that it? Not of Grace. It wasn’t as though she was longing to go back to those days with Stan; if anything, she wanted to get further away from them. But of Leo? Sure, he’d have Grace’s attention, but it was never like she had been bothered by that with any of the other serious romances in the redhead’s life. Still, when she thought about it, when she thought about him, that feeling in her heart intensified. Why would she be jealous of him?

Karen heard a voice before she could put any more thought to it.

“Do you think I did the right thing?”

Grace had said it so quietly that Karen swore she was hearing things at first. But she felt the redhead lift her head off of her shoulder, saw that those eyes were filled with the question, and knew that Grace needed an answer. She bit back the knee jerk response-- _ Shouldn’t you ask that  _ before  _ the ceremony? _ \--because she just didn’t have the heart to play that game tonight. But she felt all of her unspoken objections to Leo start to rise to her lips, and she tried so hard to swallow them down. In any other circumstance, it would have been the perfect opportunity. Grace asked a direct question; it was only fair that she get a direct answer. And Karen could tell her about all of her misgivings, how she doesn’t think Leo realizes the gift that lives inside of Grace, how he always seems two seconds away from taking it, taking  _ her, _ for granted. She could tell her that two months isn’t a lot of time to get to know someone, and what’s going to happen when she wakes up one day and realizes she made a mistake? She could tell her that Will’s instinct about him was right, no matter what Will’s reasons were. She could tell her that she just didn’t feel right about this guy, and she never has.

But that’s not what you say to someone who just said “I do.”

“I think,” she started, picking her words as carefully as she could, “if it makes you happy, then it’s the right thing.”

Grace thought about it for a moment before she nodded and rested her head back on Karen’s shoulder. “Then I guess it’s right,” she said. The dark haired woman could have sworn that the redhead sounded weary when she said it. But maybe it was just the exhaustion brought on by the day. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get past it unless she told herself that was the reason.

Karen slid her arm around Grace’s waist and felt her burrow further into her side. She listened as the redhead started sliding into a rambling conversation, putting a voice to whatever was in her head and waiting for a response. She planted a kiss on the crown of Grace’s head before she joined in on the talk, laughed when Grace tried to siphon off of her martini when she decided the bartender wasn’t making with her drink fast enough (“Where do you get off?” she said in jest, to which Grace simply replied, “I’m the bride” and drank). She let it sink in that they were at a party to celebrate the redhead, and the redhead chose to lounge with her wallflower of an assistant, their backs turned towards everyone else, without hesitation or regret. She thought about how extraordinary her current drinking buddy was.

And she hoped to god that Grace was right about Leo.

* * *

 

_ 2003 _

“No, Leo, I’m not asking you to come home. I just want you to understand that I’m upset.”

If it were anyone else she was eavesdropping on, Karen would have been reveling in the fact that her supposedly terrible opinions were the only good ones given. But as she stood in the doorway to Grace’s Brooklyn bedroom, watching the redhead in conversation with her husband, she couldn’t help but feel an immense sense of relief. It was about time Grace started speaking up for herself in this marriage; Karen just hoped that Leo would take it to heart.

Of course, if she hadn’t come back to this ill-advised girls night, she never would have known how sound Grace thought her opinions were.

Adjusting to the redhead’s marriage was no easy feat over the last few months. She had been so used to the way they had always operated that she chose not to think about the inevitability of change. But then suddenly, Karen was in the dating scene again, and suddenly, Grace became generous with tips and advice about how to navigate it all like the dark haired woman was a teenager who just came home with a boy’s number written on her palm. Karen couldn’t stand how awkward it felt when the tables turned, but she knew Grace’s heart was in the right place and she knew she could handle it. It was this strange, newfound superiority of hers that Karen couldn’t stomach.

Funny how four months of smooth sailing made someone believe it was always going to be that way. Grace had basked in that illusion of perfection even though she could have taken one look at any of the women she invited to Brooklyn tonight and seen just how much of a lie perfection is. Karen could tell that Grace was taking in her arguments with Stan, her move out of the manse, her struggle to come to terms with it all, and she could see Grace making the mental note to never end up like that. She didn’t blame the redhead; after all,  _ she _ never planned to end up like this, either. It just stung a little, knowing that Grace thought she found the key to success that Karen was still looking for. But sometimes you had to crash head-on into the inevitable for the lie of perfection to really register as a lie. And sometimes, that crash comes in the form of your husband’s nightly “I love you” call turning into a “Doctors Without Borders needs me for five more weeks, so I’m staying” call.

Karen had ample opportunity to see how Leo’s absence affected Grace, considering Leo was a million miles away more often than he was home with his wife. She could see how the redhead would get a little sad, a little lonely. She saw the brave face Grace would put on and how forced it sometimes was. She knew Grace was keeping her mouth shut about it, because how could she possibly complain while her husband was off saving lives in Africa? She had also seen her own fair share of wedded hardships, and she knew she could pull from her experiences in order to help the redhead through this. But Karen couldn’t make her marriage work. So when Grace asked if she did the right thing in telling him she was okay with it all when she clearly wasn’t, Karen’s opinion didn’t count. When Karen asked why, Grace skirted around the subject. When Grace skirted around the subject, Karen understood perfectly. When Karen understood, she said her piece anyway, told Grace to communicate with her husband for a change instead of dealing with it on her own.

When Karen said her piece, she left.

It wasn’t her finest moment; usually, she had a thicker skin. But the fact that it was Grace made it too much to handle. She had always thought that Grace understood her, that Grace could see how, despite all outward evidence to the contrary, she tried. She trusted the redhead more than she trusted most people, her husband included. Which made it hurt more when the redhead did these things. Which made it all the more appealing to retreat to the comfort of her hotel suite when the going got tough. Which made her instinct tell her to run instead of stand there and take it.

But come on, Karen. Think about it for a minute. Think about every time that honeymoon phase ended, when you were left with the unpolished, gritty truth about the person you just pledged to share your life with. How angry you were when the perfection became a lie. You wouldn’t have listened to anyone who told you you could never get that delusional happiness back. So why would Grace?

She sighed with the weight of the situation and how she handled it on her chest. She was almost home when she realized that this was all so new to the redhead, that she abandoned her when she needed someone the most.

She was almost home when she turned right back around to Brooklyn, realizing she needed to put her own stupid pride to the side for a moment and be there for her friend.

Grace looked surprised to see Karen standing in her doorway when she hung up the phone, but the surprise soon gave way to what looked like relief. They made up like Karen knew they would and soldiered on with the evening, even though neither of them felt much like a girls night anymore. And when the other women eventually made their exit, Karen stood up from her seat. “God, finally,” she sighed before she pointed to the bedroom. “Alright, honey. Get in there.”

Grace looked from Karen to the bedroom and back again with a furrowed brow. “Why?”

“You’re going to pack a bag, and then you’re coming back with me to my suite at the Palace. I don’t like the idea of you staying here alone tonight.”

There were times when Grace’s poker face failed miserably and Karen could tell that she genuinely stunned the redhead. Like every time she let her guard down during this separation from Stan. Like every time she came to Grace’s rescue, even when Grace didn’t fully realize she needed help. If she knew Grace at all, she knew that the redhead probably wanted nothing more than to race into that bedroom and throw an overnight bag together. She wanted nothing more than to retreat with the dark haired woman and bury her problems in the darkest corner of a luxury suite. But if she knew Grace at all, she knew that she’d be thinking of how much Karen had on her plate right now, how she wouldn’t want to be the latest addition, thinking she should be able to handle her own problems. And just as Karen figured, Grace brushed her hair behind her ear and shook her head, trying on a brave face. “Karen, you don’t have to do that,” she said softly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Gracie, come on...do you really want to be stuck in Brooklyn right now, when your family is in Manhattan?”

In that moment, Karen could see Grace start to buckle. She knew the redhead didn’t feel like she deserved kindness right now; after the way she dismissed the dark haired woman tonight, she probably didn’t expect to see her until what would have surely been an awkward Monday morning at work. But it didn’t mean that Karen wouldn’t show up for her, something she couldn’t even really say that about her own husband right now. Still, she could see Grace not wanting to seem desperate, wanting to make it look like she could take care of herself. Wanting to wait until she could say yes to an offer that didn’t reek of loneliness and decimated expectations.

“Honey…” Karen started, thinking of the perfect solution. “Room service, on me.”

There we go.

It wasn’t long before Grace was packed and ready to get out of this place. They were silent on the ride to the Palace, Grace staring out the window in the back seat, Karen watching over Grace. The dark haired woman could swear she felt the swirl of thoughts racing around the redhead’s mind, and she wondered if Grace was as dizzy as she was because of it. She saw Grace reach out her hand for Karen’s like she was trying to steady herself, her eyes still trained on the city speeding by outside as if she didn’t want to give herself away, as if it made her weak to reach out for someone; her hold was tight once she found the dark haired woman’s hand, and Karen knew she had her answer. Karen felt the warmth of Grace’s touch and started tracing circles on the redhead’s skin with her thumb. For a moment, she thought Grace might tell her to stop. But then she saw Grace move in closer, until she came to rest against Karen’s body. And Karen wouldn’t stop tracing circles.

The dark haired woman could feel the redhead breathing deeply against her, in and out, one soothing wave after another because those waves finally had the space to roll. Grace would never tell anyone that apartment in Brooklyn didn’t feel right. But every time Karen walked into that apartment on Riverside Drive, she felt so much of Grace living and breathing inside those walls; when she walked into Grace’s new home, the only one she could feel was Leo. The life he had lived before he placed his ring on Grace’s finger hadn’t made a move to let her in. It broke Karen’s heart. And it made her understand why Grace kept taking breaths like the walls were no longer closing in on her.

It’s hard living in a home that never feels like yours. Karen knew that better than anybody.

When Karen led Grace into her suite, she pretended not to see the way the redhead’s eyes grew wider as she looked around the place, smiling in spite of herself for still being able to wow her. Maybe there would have been a time when Karen thought this was as impressive as Grace did; it probably would have been long before she knew what it took to get here. Karen ordered a few desserts and some wine from room service--she  _ did _ want to stay true to her word, after all--while Grace went into the bathroom to change into pajamas and gave the dark haired woman the privacy to do the same. She wished she knew how to handle this, when to try to engage the redhead, what to say when she did it, if she should say anything at all. She had told herself to simply wait until Grace was ready to talk, but if she was anything like Karen, she would need a little push.

She just didn’t realize that push would come in the form of cheesecake.

“Oh my god, this looks fantastic.”

Karen turned from pouring the wine to see her friend charging towards the dessert. She saw the first genuine smile on Grace’s face that she had seen all night as Grace dipped her pinky into the strawberry compote of one of the slices for a taste. The redhead’s eyes lit up as she grabbed the plate and a glass and made her way to the bedroom. “You know what’s great about hotels?” she called out as Karen followed her. “There’s no one to give you hell for eating in bed.”

Karen climbed into bed beside Grace. “You realize you don’t live with Will anymore, right?” she joked.

“Yeah, but it’s like his judgment followed me into Brooklyn.” She fell silent for a moment, savoring the bite she just took, before glancing over at the dark haired woman. “Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly. “I was horrible to you tonight.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need help, honey.” Karen sighed. “Remember when we went to the prison to visit Stan for the first time? I really didn’t want to be alone that night, and I really didn’t want to admit it. And there you were, making sure your stubborn assistant had someone to lean on.” She reaches out to Grace, her hand landing on the redhead’s thigh. “Gracie, I get thinking you have to do this by yourself. But you don’t. You’re my friend, and I love you. So consider this payback.”

Karen could see Grace struggle to speak at first. She was the first to admit she wasn’t overly generous with the kindness that hid beneath her surface. But she always wanted Grace to know she had it, that she could turn to her in times like this, when everyone was expecting the burden to fall on Will’s shoulders. She knew she didn’t have the words for why Grace was the only one who could see it. She just knew that it felt right for her to be the only one.

Grace picked at the crust of her cheesecake with her fork until she found her voice. “You’re incredible, Karen,” she murmured.

Karen furrowed her brow. “Because I care about you?” she asked.

“Because you care about me even when you’re mad at me.”

The dark haired woman tilted her head and tried to lock her eyes with the redhead’s. “I’m not mad at you, honey. You’re just veering a little too close to my experiences for my liking.”

Grace sighed as she sipped her wine. “I just thought we’d have a little more time to actually be together before stuff like this started happening. I can’t even remember the last thing we did together.”

They let that hang in the silence as Grace set her plate and glass on the nightstand and lay down. There were a million things Karen could have said in that moment, and she knew that none of them were what Grace wanted to hear. Like how eventually, you think about trying to remember those things less and less. Like how eventually, you stop thinking about it altogether. Like how eventually, you barely notice the absence, and when you finally do, you can’t even be surprised by the fact that you’re not surprised. But instead of putting a voice to any of that, Karen rested her head on her pillow and tried to find something to fill the space, closing her eyes to see if she could dig a little deeper when she realized she couldn’t find anything.

“Do you remember the reception, when you told me that if it makes me happy, it’s the right thing?”

Karen’s eyes fluttered open as she turned to find Grace looking at her expectantly, and she nodded against her pillow.

“What happens if it doesn’t make me happy?”

Karen saw Grace’s eyes start to glass over with tears, and her heart started to sink. “Oh, Gracie, come here.” The dark haired woman opened her arms as the redhead burrowed into her. She could hear Grace’s sniffling muffled against her shoulder. “You’re just going through a rough patch. It happens. Welcome to marriage.” She felt Grace groan against her skin and gave her a little squeeze. “Honey, look at me.” When Grace’s wet eyes met hers, she found it hard to speak. The dark haired woman hated Leo more in this moment than she ever had before, because he wasn’t even here for his wife as she reached her first breaking point. If this marriage was anything like Karen’s attempts, she knew Grace would have others, ones that she should be able to talk through with the man she married. Because Karen didn’t know what she could really offer Grace. But it wasn’t going to stop her from trying. “You’re going to get past this. He’ll be home before you know it, and you’ll make up for all that lost time, and you’ll forget you ever felt this way.”

She wasn’t entirely sure she believed that. She wasn’t entirely sure Grace believed it, either. But as she wiped away Grace’s tears, Karen threw a line out there that she hoped the redhead would catch before either of them could delve into it.

“And you know, you don’t have to go back there if you don’t want to, at least not until he comes back. There’s plenty of room here. No one has to know you’re not toughing it out in Brooklyn.”

The smallest smile started to play across Grace’s lips. “You would really do that for me?” she asked softly.

“Of course I would, honey.” She watched the redhead burrow herself back into her embrace. “As long as you realize we can’t live on cheesecake and wine alone.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Karen could swear she felt Grace smile against her skin.

The dark haired woman felt the redhead relax further and further into her body, a sleepy “Thank you, Karen” filling the last bit of space between them. Karen moved to turn out the light, trying to shake the defeated look on Grace’s face out of her mind. She tried to focus on the things she liked in the hopes of driving the image away. She liked that Grace trusted her so much, even though she hardly ever gave the redhead a good reason. She liked that Grace didn’t object to being here. She liked that Grace thought she was incredible, and she liked that Grace was letting her help. She liked that Grace hadn’t pulled away from her and she liked that, if anything, Grace curled herself into her arms as far as she could go. She liked to think that Grace felt safe tonight.

She liked feeling the weight of Grace pressed against her as she fell asleep. And she liked the idea of feeling the weight of Grace pressed against her as she woke up in the morning.

**********

She never had a routine with anybody before. All the years that came before this were filled with making sure you moved around in the morning without waking the other person up. They were filled with picking at a solitary breakfast and being lucky if you even saw the one you supposedly gave your heart to before nightfall. They were filled with not wanting to go home until the last possible second, ducking into bars and seeing if you had the energy to stay until last call. They were filled with radio silence. They were not filled with loving routines.

But she had a routine with Grace. And it was crazy how quickly she fell into it.

Every morning, Karen would wake up to the alarm that Grace set, and her eyes would flutter open to find the redhead smiling next to her. Or, more so lately, she would wake up to find that Grace had wrapped herself in Karen’s arms like she had finally found her place and kept wanting to retreat to the comfort of it. She could see how Grace watched her as she got ready for the day like she was making sure the dark haired woman wouldn’t make them late for work, like there wasn’t an option where the redhead would leave for the office alone. Karen liked feeling Grace’s eyes on her. And she oddly liked being consistently punctual for a change.

They would spend their work day carrying on the conversations they started before they left the hotel, Grace remembering something she forgot to tell Karen when they woke up, Karen making Grace laugh just because she could. Will would visit and ask how Grace’s night in Brooklyn was, and Grace would always answer vaguely before sneaking a sly smile to Karen behind his back. Sometimes, the redhead would make plans with him out of guilt; she  _ was _ lying to him, after all. But usually, she would make some excuse so that she could walk out of there with Karen. Usually, as the weeks went on, she found herself taking the dark haired woman’s hand as they left, leading her out of Grace Adler Designs like she couldn’t wait to get back home. It wasn’t the worst feeling in the world.

But Karen liked their nights together more than anything else. The way Grace would shout at the TV when someone on it did something she thought was stupid. The way Grace would get animated after a couple glasses of wine. The way Grace would hum as she got ready for bed, and how that hum lived in her lower register, how it never sounded like her normal singing voice. The way Grace made sure she kissed Karen’s cheek every night before the lights went out. It almost felt like Grace honestly considered this home. It almost felt like the redhead forgot why she was living with the dark haired woman in the first place. It almost felt like…

Well. Karen didn’t want to admit what it almost felt like. Or that she loved the way it almost felt.

It was rare that Karen went anywhere without Grace anymore, but one morning, she woke up with the urge to get a little shopping done and the good sense to let her sleeping redhead rest; god forbid anyone wake Grace up any earlier than she has to be awake on a weekend. She walked around Manhattan, let the bags add up in her hands until they started to climb up her arm. On her way home, she thought about how she should go back out there with Grace, once she was fully awake and ready to take on the world. It could be fun. She smiled to herself about it as she reached the Palace, as she made her way up to her suite. She opened her door and dropped her bags as soon as she could, making her way to the bedroom to see if Grace was up and about yet. But when she reached the doorway, she froze; Grace was not only up and about, she had nearly finished packing all of her things into her suitcases. Karen steadied herself against the doorway, feeling the wind being knocked out of her. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

She couldn’t believe she forgot that eventually, Grace would leave.

“Oh good, you’re back!” Grace exclaimed as she zipped up the suitcases. “I was starting to think I’d have to leave without seeing you.” She slid the suitcases off of the bed and wheeled them out to the living area. She didn’t register the sadly perplexed look on Karen’s face.

“Honey, you’re leaving already?” Karen asked, still standing by the doorway.

“Leo’s flight lands in a couple of hours. I wanted to drop all of this at home first before I head to the airport.”

Home. Of course. Brooklyn was home. Karen knew that. She just didn’t know why it felt like such a gut punch. She took a breath to recover. “Well, Gracie, at least let me take you back to the apartment.”

“Kare, it’s okay. I got it,” she smiled. “I don’t want you to go all the way out there when you don’t have to.” She moved slowly towards Karen like she did the first time she ever asked for Karen’s opinion of Leo, like they hadn’t just spent the last few weeks mastering the art of living together. Karen wondered when she got back to being so nervous. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate what you did for me.”

The dark haired woman shook her head. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it is. Sometimes I don’t know why I can’t go to Will for things like this.” Karen could think of a couple reasons based on who the redhead married, but that was neither here nor there. “But you made it easy to come to you. You let me invade your space for over a month when you didn’t have to. That’s a lot.” Grace offered a small smile. “At least now you don’t have to worry about tripping over me all the time.”

“I never worried about it,” Karen said, but it came out as a whisper she was certain Grace didn’t hear.

“Anyway, I guess I should go.” Grace enveloped Karen in a hug and murmured “Thank you for everything” into her ear. She pulled away without kissing Karen’s cheek the way she always had these last few weeks. She maneuvered her luggage through the front door of Karen’s suite and rushed to the elevator, leaving Karen to stare at the door as it shut behind the redhead.

And just like that, their five weeks were up.

Karen tried to occupy herself as long as she could once Grace left, racking up a decent tab in the hotel bar, going out for that second round of shopping that was supposed to be for Grace as much as it was supposed to be for her. But once she settled back into her suite, she could no longer escape the fact that she was alone again. God, was the suite always this big? Was it always this empty, this quiet? She wondered how she never noticed it before. She wondered why she was so willing to let Grace stay here for so long if it was only going to call attention to the bigness, the emptiness, the quietness when she left. She wondered how she could ever blame this on Grace’s presence, when it was clearly her own fault. She wondered what was happening in Brooklyn right now.

She wondered if Grace told Leo where she had been these last few weeks, before realizing that she probably wouldn’t. She wondered how much effort it would take Grace to tell him she braved Brooklyn on her own, before realizing how much effort it took to be okay with the redhead’s lie. She wondered where they were right now, what they were doing to celebrate Leo’s homecoming, before realizing how much it stung to think about that.

She wondered why she couldn’t shut her brain down, before she finally put herself to bed in the hopes that she could just turn it off that way.

The next day, Karen picked at a solitary breakfast before going into the office and realizing that Grace had taken the day off to be with Leo without telling her. She called up Jack to keep her company, to keep her distracted. And when the sun set, she ducked into a bar to see if she had the energy to stay until last call. She tried not to think about the radio silence from Grace. She tried not to think about the absence of their routine. She put off going back to the Palace until the last possible second. Because it’s hard living in a home that stopped feeling like yours.

Karen knew that better than anybody.


	3. Sad Songs for Savage Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tweaked the timeline a little bit so that Karen and Lyle were still together by the time "Ice Cream Balls" takes place, but other than that, this chapter follows the timeline of season six. There are also times where I pulled dialogue that fit the narrative; otherwise, the words are my own.

_**“I put on a record,** _   
_**It was called ‘Sad Songs for Savage Lovers’** _   
_**I called you up, told you what I thought** _   
_**And then I ran for cover”** _

_ 2003 _

By the fourth call, she didn’t have to ask Grace what time it was in Cambodia.

She wasn’t expecting to have to ask Grace what time it was in Cambodia at all, not after she made it perfectly clear how she felt about Leo. All it took was Grace bringing him along unannounced to their tennis date to fully set her off, to tell the redhead about her precious husband. If anything, the way Leo reacted to the discovery that Karen didn’t like him should have been a red flag for Grace. And maybe it was; the dark haired woman could see the heaviness behind the redhead’s eyes like she was considering everything that was said. But Grace never said anything out loud. And by the time she decided to join her husband in Cambodia as an attempt to stay together during his Doctors Without Borders assignment, Karen didn’t think she’d hear from Grace directly at all. She assumed she would be getting her updates from Will. Which meant she assumed she wouldn’t be getting the whole story.

But then one night the phone rang. And she picked up. And the connection was terrible, but Karen could still hear the meekness in the redhead’s voice when she said her name, like she was doing something she shouldn’t, like Karen was going to yell at her for merely mentioning his name. “I know you how you feel about him,” she had said at the start of that first call. “I think that’s why I need to talk to you about him.” She had sighed and said that she hadn’t seen him in a couple of days, that he was busy with his assignment, of course he was busy with his assignment, why did she think she would actually get to spend time with him here? Karen had tried to get her to see a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel, even though she wasn’t entirely sure the light was even there; she had told the redhead the usual, that it was just another rough patch and it was temporary. She had said it so many times before, she was getting worse and worse at being able to hide the fact that she didn’t believe it. But she wasn’t sure what else she could do from thousands of miles away. And whether or not Grace believed her half-hearted claims that the storm would pass, the redhead accepted it before they moved on to the good stuff, anything that could distract both of them from the fact that they weren’t in the same room with each other. It was enough to make Grace call again, and again, and again.

Once she realized how far ahead Cambodia was compared to New York, Karen started asking Grace what tomorrow looked like. It was silly, she knew that, but it also told her more about Grace’s mindset during any given call than Grace would have likely been willing to tell. If the redhead started joking around about it, Karen knew it was a better day than most. If she gave the honest answer, something bleak that has more to do with her own feelings about her situation than anything else, Karen knew to be a little more gentle, to amp up the distractions, to try to make her laugh like her heart was in it. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But she swore Grace’s voice made it sound like she appreciated the effort. And Karen would gladly take that.

It didn’t take long for Grace to start calling every night. And it didn’t take long for Karen to gradually drop the rough patch act and start giving the redhead advice she could actually use: how to keep herself occupied during those dips of loneliness, where to put her anger when he isn’t there to hand it off to, how to put on a brave face even though she’s exhausted by everything. She owed Grace that much, culling from her own experiences to make the redhead’s a little easier to handle. Besides, it was getting harder and harder to try to keep everything positive when she knew it wasn’t and couldn’t see a time when it would be. And it seemed like Grace appreciated the candor; why else would she keep calling like that, prefacing the more serious points with a “Please don’t tell Will” and a beat of silence until Karen promised? The dark haired woman could see how much Grace trusted her, even if she never understood why; she wasn’t about to mess that up.

She would have been lying if she said she didn’t thrill a little bit at the fact that she was the one Grace was truly turning to. But she wasn’t about to rub it in Will’s face like that...not now, anyway. If she happened to let it slip once Grace made her triumphant return, though, so be it.

It had been a few days since Grace last called, since Karen last asked what tomorrow looked like. It was unusual to say the least; she was used to hearing the redhead’s staticky voice before she went to bed. She was used to hearing how tomorrow looked and skirting around the real reasons she kept calling Park Avenue instead of Riverside Drive. And when she didn’t hear the phone ring at first, she thought maybe Leo had finally gotten it together, that they finally started to make things work. But that didn’t really sound like him. It worried Karen that she hadn’t heard from Grace; she wondered if it worried Will this much when he went a few days without getting a call before she realized that Grace didn’t usually tell him things that would make him worry. She tried to keep herself still in her bedroom, kept trying to tell herself she was making too much of it, that Grace will call when she wants to call. But what if she needs someone? What if she’s lonely?

Well, then she knows how to dial your number, Karen.

But what if…

But...

Screw it. She was picking up the phone.

She tapped her fresh manicure against the nightstand in impatience as the dial tone kept singing the same note over and over again. She was about to give up entirely when the final tone stopped halfway through. She found herself holding her breath and not being entirely sure why. “Hello?” she heard on the other end of the phone.

“Grace?”

She didn't know if the surprise in the redhead’s voice was a good thing or a bad thing. “Karen? Is everything okay?”

“Well, sure, honey,” she said, trying to brush off the worry. “It’s just...you know, it’s been a couple days. I just wanted to know what tomorrow looks like.”

She could hear Grace scoff. “Same as it always looks.” The redhead sighed. “That’s why I haven’t called. I figured you wouldn’t want to hear the same things over and over again.”

“That hasn’t stopped you before,” Karen tried to smile.

“Well…then maybe I didn’t want to  _ say _ the same things over and over again.” Grace took a breath. “I hate it here, Kare.”

“Gracie, no one is forcing you to stay,” the dark haired woman said gently.

“I know, but I told Leo I’d stay with him, so I guess I should just suck it up.”

“Oh good lord, you can’t keep sacrificing yourself for him like this!” She didn’t mean for her voice to sound so short; she just hated the fact that Grace was suffering. She tried to soften her tone as she continued. “This isn’t like you’re compromising on who gets to do the dishes tonight, okay? This is legitimately affecting your marriage. Grace, if you’re this unhappy now, it’s going to get to the point where you can’t look at him without blaming him for it. Trust me.”

Grace was silent, and Karen hoped it was because she was thinking about her escape. “Even if I wanted to,” she said finally, “how exactly am I supposed to pay for it? It’s not like I’ve been working these last few weeks.”

“Honey, if I can handle all of these long distance charges for nightly calls to Cambodia, I think I can handle a measly little flight. Let me take care of it.”

“Karen…”

“Bup-bup-bup,” the dark haired woman interrupted. “Consider it done. Just come home, Grace.”

The redhead sighed. “Thank you.” She paused for a moment. “How are you so smart about all of this?” Karen didn’t know if it was the connection, or if the redhead really did have a smile in her voice. She hoped it was the latter.

“I walked the darker paths so you don’t have to.” Well. Maybe Grace’s path was starting to dim. But she’d be damned if she’d ever let all the lights go out.

“I’ll let you get some sleep.” Karen was about to pull the phone away from her ear when she heard Grace’s voice again. “By the way,” the redhead said before they hung up. “Tomorrow’s looking a little bit better now.” The dark haired woman felt a rush of relief come over her when she put the phone back in the cradle, the knowledge that Grace would soon be homeward bound allowing her to sleep that night.

Karen wasn’t surprised when Grace asked her to be the one to pick her up at the airport a few days later. She knew the redhead gave Will some bogus reason for flying back (god, Karen didn’t even think he knew it was for good yet; he just assumed it was for a couple of days), probably made it seem like it was no big deal and it would just be easier for the dark haired woman to make the trip; you can fit a lot of luggage into a limo, after all. And somehow, he went along with it. What did he care how Grace got there, as long as she got there? He was expecting a fun weekend with his best friend. Karen was expecting a lot of late night visits and covert phone calls. And she did not mind it.

The dark haired woman triple checked that she had the right terminal, could not stop looking at the watch she never wore until now making sure that she would be on time for Grace, hoping that Grace’s flight wasn’t late. She could feel the tingle of her nerves starting to come alive and she didn’t quite know why. It wasn’t like she was meeting a stranger. This was her girl; she shouldn’t be nervous. But it got worse every time she saw a wave of people walking towards her, people she didn’t recognize, people who weren’t her redhead, that rise and fall of anticipation and disappointment rolling in again and again and again. Until she finally spotted a wildfire defying nature to float in the middle of yet another nondescript tide.

Karen held her breath for a moment when she first saw Grace, stone-faced and weary; whether it was from the flight or from her situation, the dark haired woman couldn’t be sure. But then the redhead’s eyes finally found hers, and Karen saw her pick up her pace, saw the look in her eyes that she always gets when she’s trying to will the tears to stay below the surface. It took all Karen had to keep herself from rushing to meet her at the midway point. And in the end, she was glad she didn’t; she didn’t think anything could top the feeling of Grace crashing into her arms while she was standing still. Karen wrapped her arms around Grace’s waist as she tried to find her voice, coming up empty so many times before she murmured the only thing she could manage.

“Welcome home, honey.”

She heard Grace sniffle against her ear, felt a tear drop onto her skin, and she wished she knew if it was from overwhelming happiness or overwhelming sadness. She wished she had the capacity to ask. But she was just stunned that after so many weeks of deep conversations over terrible phone connections, she could finally hold Grace, look her in the eye when she talks to her, tell her to her face that they can work it out together. She was stunned when Grace’s whisper brushed against her ear. “I missed you so much.”

Karen could feel the sea of weary travelers parting around them as she whispered back, “I missed you too, Gracie.” She could sense their annoyance as she stayed rooted in place with the redhead. She knew that there were so many pairs of eyes on them, necks craning to get a look, murmurs passing them by that were probably directed at them. None of that mattered in the slightest.

Because when Karen was about to let go, Grace held on tighter.

* * *

 

_2004_

It had been a while since they were alone like this. Karen wondered if Grace was thinking it, too. She wondered if Grace was thinking about deep conversations over cheesecake and curling into each other as they fell asleep, if she was thinking about going home hand in hand and kissing Karen’s cheek before lights out. She wondered if that was why Grace asked her to do this.

She wondered why she hoped that it was.

When Grace invited her to come along on this trip to Vermont to check on the frozen pipes in Leo’s cabin, she almost said no. She thought back to their time at the Palace last year, to getting so used to having the redhead around all the time only to have her leave an overwhelming void behind, and she wasn’t sure if she could put herself through that again; it didn’t matter that this trip would only be for a couple of days. But then Grace got a look in her eyes that made it impossible to refuse, and the next thing she knew, she was in the passenger seat of a rental car realizing that she wouldn’t have been able to refuse her even without that look in her eyes. She spent the ride to Vermont with her poker face in full force as she tried to brace herself. She wouldn’t fall so deep if she didn’t let herself.

Plus, it helped that she had Lyle to come back to.

It was absolutely crazy when she thought about it. Karen couldn’t believe that Lyle Finster ended up sticking around, especially after the way she was using him at first; she had been blinded by the idea of getting under Lorraine’s skin, and what better way to do that than to start sleeping with her father? But the further it went, the more she realized she had a soft spot for the guy. He had cultivated a certain brand of strange in his time, and it meshed well with her own. She didn’t think it was love that she felt when she looked at him--she had felt stronger things when she looked at Grace, for god’s sake--but she thought it would be enough to sustain her. She thought it made it a little more bearable every time Grace mentioned Leo with what sounded like affection in her voice, even though that affection started fading away the longer he stayed in Cambodia.

Karen had no idea how Grace felt about Lyle, and she wanted so badly to ask. But every time she thought to, this immense sense of guilt washed over her. She knew the redhead was going through it with her husband, and she wanted to be there for her as much as she possibly could be; that never equated to shifting the spotlight onto her own relationship (or whatever it was she had going on with him; she wasn’t quite sure how to label it). If she could just get a read on what the redhead thought of him, she’d be able to feel something about her decisions.

If she could just get a read on how Grace really felt about Leo, maybe she could make a different decision entirely.

She couldn’t go by the fact that once they made it to the cabin, Grace insisted that they sleep in the same bed, that it was big enough for both of them, so stop telling her you can sleep on the couch, Karen; the redhead had fallen asleep in her arms nightly during their stay at the Palace, and look what happened there. She couldn’t go by the fact that Grace kissed her goodnight, either (although, maybe she  _ could _ go by the fact that when Grace kissed her goodnight, she kissed Karen’s lips instead of her cheek). She wanted some kind of sign that would give her a little more certainty. It wasn’t until they found upwards of $40,000 tucked inside Leo’s mattress that she realized she should have been a little more specific in her wishes.

All she wanted was a definite answer on what Grace planned to do once her husband came home; she never meant for her to spiral so fast in the process.

“I can’t believe this!” Grace exclaimed, wide-eyed as she pulled bundles of cash from their hiding place. Karen looked up from the pile of bills on her own side of the mattress and instantly recognized the look on the redhead’s face for what it was: the shock and anger that always showed up arm and arm with betrayal. “What is Leo doing with all this money? And why is he hiding it from me?”

“Honey, there’s got to be an explanation for this,” Karen said, not knowing what that explanation could be, not really believing that there was a good one to begin with. But maybe it would be enough for the redhead to take a breath.

Grace shook her head as Karen watched the fire in her eyes glowing brighter. “My husband doesn’t trust me. That’s what this is about.” She scoffed, locked eyes with Karen, threw the last of the money onto the mattress. “God, this is so typical. What else has he been keeping from me? Huh?” She started pacing around the bed, and Karen knew there would be no stopping her now. “You know, he didn’t even put up a fight when I told him I wanted to leave Cambodia. He was all too eager to get me out of there, he didn’t even try to put a plan in place to make staying together work. He gave up way too easily. I used to think it was because he recognized how unhappy I was.” She padded her way back to the bed and ran her fingers along a stack of bills. “Now I’m wondering what he’s been hiding over there, since he couldn’t wait for me to leave.”

The dark haired woman knew that Grace wasn’t thinking clearly in the heat of the moment. But she also knew that the exact same thoughts were going through her own mind while the redhead was giving a voice to them. And she couldn’t say anything without fanning the flames to something uncontrollable. She watched as Grace held the money in her hands, the redhead’s look slowly shifting from anger to scheming, as if a lightbulb had just gone off in her head. She looked at Karen with a small smirk starting to play across her face. “This is my money as much as it is his,” she said like she was perfectly fine with using her marriage as an excuse for revenge. “And I’m gonna go out, and I’m gonna spend my half.”

It was a terrible idea; Karen knew that even as she voiced her agreement. But she had to admit, she kind of loved when Grace showed off her vindictive side.

When Grace cleared the money off the mattress, she looked rejuvenated for a brief, shining moment, the promise of getting Leo back for keeping secrets bringing her back from the edge. But as they climbed back into bed and turned off the light, the frenzy of the situation had given way to the quiet of Vermont, and the quiet of Vermont let each of them sit with everything that had just happened. Karen rested her head on her pillow and sighed, trying to figure out how to to spin this plan into something Grace wouldn’t regret in the morning. But as her mind’s gears were turning, she heard the redhead break through the silence.

“Sometimes I wish I never left the Palace.”

Karen could have said any number of things that would have been hollow but at least wouldn’t have the redhead questioning her decisions, wouldn’t have accidentally shown her own hand.  _ You had to give it a shot, Gracie. He’s your husband; where else were you going to go? _ Instead, before she could stop, she found herself turning to face the redhead and murmuring, “Me too.”

Grace’s smile lit up the darkness. She looked like she had just found the encouragement she needed. “We had a good time, didn’t we?” she asked in a brightly hushed tone. “It was just so easy with you. And completely insane that a hotel felt that much like home. Although maybe that was just my roommate.”

It was incredible, how quickly that rush of nerves overtook Karen’s body. It was the worst kind of adrenaline, leaving her open to say something a little too revealing, do something a little too stupid when they were within inches of each other. And Grace was hitting a little too close to home, getting a little too real for her to be able to leave this cabin feeling like she was still intact. Because if she didn’t know any better, she could have sworn that Grace…

She wasn’t sure what it meant if she finished that sentence. She wasn’t sure what it meant that she  _ wanted _ to finish that sentence.

“Well,” she sighed, trying to piece together the slightest semblance of a poker face, “just be glad it ended when it did, honey. Any longer, and we probably would have driven each other up the walls. And we work together, so we wouldn’t have even been able to get away from each other. Trust me, it was for the best.”

The redhead propped herself up on her elbow, focused her gaze on the dark haired woman. “I don't believe that. I don’t think you do, either.” Karen held her breath as Grace reached over to brush a rogue lock of hair behind her ear, let her fingers linger along the dark haired woman’s cheek for a moment. It was so casual, like she did it a thousand times before, and for a moment, Karen was convinced that Grace was testing the waters. “I think that was the high point in my life with my husband, and my husband was a million miles away. But you were there. You’re always there.” She gave a small smile as she let her hand drop down to Karen’s, weaving their fingers together. “Even when I’m a million miles away,” she murmured.

_ Always. _ It wasn’t a promise she could make to any of her husbands, or something she ever saw herself saying to Lyle. But giving it to Grace was a no-brainer. “Why wouldn’t I be? I care about you,” she managed to whisper. “Even when you’re a million miles away.”

Grace squeezed Karen’s hand as she leaned in for one more goodnight kiss. The redhead’s lips caught the dark haired woman’s and lingered; Karen could swear Grace was trying to move in closer without breaking their connection. But even if she wasn’t, Karen still felt a charge, taunting her as it grew stronger. When Grace pulled away and rested her head on her pillow at first, she made it look so easy to fall asleep after such a jolt of electricity. But as Karen lay awake, she kept hearing the sheets rustle on Grace’s side of the bed, feeling the redhead toss and turn. And whether it was because of this new revelation about Leo, or the fact that she also felt something more in that kiss, Karen couldn’t be exactly certain. But at least she wouldn’t be the only one getting a rough night’s sleep.

In the morning, Grace was still set on the plan she made the night before, and they shoved as much cash as they could into their purses before they went on as much of a shopping spree as possible in the middle of nowhere in Vermont. She wasn’t sure if it was revenge against Leo that helped the chill color Grace’s cheeks like that or if it was the feeling of genuine fun, but every time the redhead laughed, she pressed against the dark haired woman like she needed to steady herself. Every time the redhead spoke, her voice shined like the sun against the snow at their feet. Every time she pointed out something ridiculous to buy with Leo’s money, she looked so damn excited about it that Karen wondered if Leo ever got to see this side of her, if it only ever came out once he had done something unforgivable, and if he realized what he was missing out on if it did. She was relieved to see Grace enjoying herself in spite of everything that had to be going through her head right now.

But then the other shoe dropped, just like it always did. They came back from their shopping trip to find out that it wasn’t really Leo’s cabin even though the spare key was exactly where he said it would be, that it wasn’t really Leo’s money under the mattress, that they became accidental criminals over the course of twenty-four hours. And after they had gotten into the rental car and driven far enough away from the angry couple to feel safe again, Karen wanted to laugh and tell Grace that this was going to be one of those hilarious stories they’d look back on years from now when something inevitably reminded them of the time they unintentionally tried breaking and entering on for size. But she turned to the redhead in the driver’s seat, and the redhead in the driver’s seat had the saddest eyes she had ever seen. “I’m worried,” Grace murmured.

Karen’s heart sank as she tried to get a feeling for where Grace’s head was really at with her same old bit. “But there’s nothing to worry about. That wasn't Leo’s cabin. It wasn’t his money.”

“I just hate that I went to such a crazy place.” Grace shook her head. “I hate that I went there so easily. I hate that I don’t trust him.”

There it was. Grace said it so casually, Karen thought she had misheard at first. But the redhead didn’t make a move to correct herself, and Karen found herself stunned. “Honey, you don’t mean that,” she said softly, just to be sure Grace knew what she was saying.

“Don’t I? I mean, let’s face it, I barely knew the guy when we got married. I felt so weird about that, but I married him anyway, because I figured we would have time to learn everything about each other. What did it matter if we did things a little backwards? But then he left for Africa. And then he tried to leave for Guatemala. And then Cambodia. God knows he can’t give up Doctors Without Borders just to save his marriage. He already tried that, and it didn’t work. There’s no telling where he’s going to end up next. So I just go on not knowing my husband. And how can you trust someone you don’t know?”

_ You can’t,  _ Karen thought, although she didn’t put a voice to it.

“Most of the time, I feel like I’m just kidding myself,” Grace continued. “He’s always going to be away somewhere. He’s never going to be home the way I want him to be home. I’m never going to get that time with him so I can learn how to trust him.” She sighed. “Everything happened way too fast. I got so far ahead of myself with him, it feels pointless to try to catch up.”

“Gracie…” Karen managed, but she wasn’t sure what to put after it.

“And I appreciate all the times you’ve told me it’s just a rough patch,” the redhead said as she glanced over at the passenger seat for a second. “I really do. But I think we both know that’s not what this is anymore, if it ever was that to begin with. It just feels...it feels like it’s over.”

Grace slowed to a stop at a red light and let her hand drop from the steering wheel for a moment. Before it could hit her lap, Karen grabbed a hold of it and started tracing circles on the redhead’s skin with her thumb. She wasn’t entirely sure how this became the thing that always made Grace relax, but she knew the way it worked for her, and it was all she could think to do in the moment. 

Because what do you say to someone who’s just given up?

The redhead looked to their hands and smiled; it lit a spark in Karen that kept her warm. They let the silence overtake them for a bit before Grace tried to change the subject. “So, this new guy of yours...is he good to you?” she asked as the light turned green.

Karen smiled for a moment, not at the question, but at the fact that Grace cared enough to ask it. She gave a small shrug. “Sure, I guess,” she said. “He makes for good company, anyway.”

The redhead took a breath and let it out slowly. “You deserve so much more than just company, Kare.”

“Honey, my track record doesn’t really afford that luxury.”

“Your track record shouldn’t scare you away from trying to be happy.”

Grace sounded so adamant about it that it took Karen aback. This was never a conversation that worked its way between them. The focus was usually on Grace and whatever guy she was with who didn’t deserve her. But it wasn’t as though Karen minded; her relationship with Stan barely existed when it existed, and his death last year shook her not because the love was still there (it wasn’t), but because he had always been in her life in some way and now he wasn’t. And Grace wasn’t here when Lyle came along. So there was never much to talk about. Karen couldn’t tell whether or not this was simply an attempt to stop focusing on Leo, but she didn’t like being the new center of attention; it made it far too easy for her tongue to slip and say something it shouldn’t. “It’s not like I’m unhappy with him,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I’m...content. I guess that’s the word for it.” She thought about it for a moment. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been content with someone.”

The redhead offered up a sad smile. “I know,” she said. “Just don’t lose yourself just for content, okay? Look, I know I don’t know him that well, so forgive me if this is way off base, but he just...I don’t know, Karen, he just seems like the kind of guy who won’t make a move to change it when he notices that all the compromises are going his way. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not seeing the things you see yet. But it would crush me if you didn’t move to change it either, just because you don’t want to mess with how content you are with him.”

Karen thought back to the last few conversations and arguments she had with Lyle that ended in compromise; she couldn’t remember a single one where she ended up getting her way. How could she never have noticed before? And how did Grace get to be so razor sharp about it when she’s barely seen the guy? It rattled her to see how right the redhead was. It rattled her to know how much the redhead cared. But she wasn’t about to let that show right now. She plastered on a smirk, tried on a lighter tone. “You seem pretty passionate about this. What’s with the concern all of a sudden?” she tried to joke. 

Was it her imagination, or did Grace just blush? “Nothing, I just…I…” she started, fumbling for her words, “I want to make sure you’re with someone who understands how special you are,” she said softly. “That’s all.”

The dark haired woman was expecting the nerves that rose from her core yet again about as much as she expected Grace’s answer. It sounded so genuine, so real, and it took her completely by surprise. She never heard Lyle use a voice like that when he spoke to her; she couldn’t remember the last time Stan had. And to hear Grace’s words spill from her lips with such a gentle, heartfelt tone wrapped around them like a ribbon around a gift meant more to her than anything else in that moment. She tried to to say something, anything, that was meaningful. All she could manage was, “I like that you think I’m special, honey.”

They let the silence slowly surround them again, but it was okay; way the redhead smiled said more than either of them ever could.

The closer they got to Manhattan, the sleepier Karen felt. She looked at Grace, told her she was going to nod off for a little while before Grace nodded and leaned across the front seat for a kiss. She watched the redhead shift her focus back on the road, studying her for a moment as she started questioning which one of them really was the special one. After a minute, she settled into her seat and closed her eyes, letting the rumble of the road beneath them cradle her into slumber.

She could feel Grace’s eyes on her from time to time as she drifted off to sleep, and she burrowed herself deeper into the feeling of the redhead’s care, draping its warmth around her.

**********

“I want a divorce.”

It wasn’t at all the way she planned on doing it. She figured at some point during the night, she’d have some time alone with him, pull him off to the side, gently tell him that they made a mistake, that she thought he knew it, too. They were in Vegas, after all; they couldn’t have been the first couple to elope here before realizing they didn’t want what it meant. But then Lyle had to make that damn speech in front of everyone, listing all the ways she sacrificed herself even though he never budged. God, the things about this wedding alone that she compromised on was enough to make her want to quit (why the hell didn’t anyone stop her from getting married without Grace?). And she realized that there was a precedent now, that from here on out, he would expect more of the same. And she realized she didn’t want to live like that. And by the time Lyle invited her up to the microphone to say a few words, those four were the only ones in her head. She didn’t mean to say it. It just slipped out. The way it echoed through the place, the way it bounced off the walls like a chorus of Karens bailing at once, the way it was so public. For a moment, it made her want to take it back. But it was out there. It was done. And she just wished she had someone she trusted to talk about it all with her.

She wished Grace was here. She needed her here. Because Grace saw it coming, and Grace would understand.

Instead, she got Leo. Leo, who flew from Cambodia to be at the wedding of a woman he barely likes out of marital obligation. Leo, who casually announced that his wife injured herself on the job and couldn’t fly out, like he wasn’t upset about missing out on their reunion. Leo, who was getting progressively drunker in a way Karen couldn’t even respect. Leo, who looked overwhelmingly like a man who was hiding something. She watched the way he squirmed when he talked to Will, and if she hadn’t just dumped her husband thirty minutes after she married him, she’d probably make her way over there and figure out what the hell he did. Because she knew he did  _ something. _ He had to have done something. And he better not have done something to Grace.

But what was the alternative?

Karen meant to cut her losses and head back up to her suite, maybe see if there was another room available so she could avoid whatever would come out of a night living in the same space as Lyle. But then the bartender set a fresh martini in front of her, and she knew she was stuck for another few minutes. She took a look around, saw the way most people carried on like the reason they were here in the first place didn’t just crumble, and a small part of her had to respect the resolve. She realized that Lyle was gone and she had no idea when he left; she wasn’t entirely sure why that surprised her. And then there was Will, rushing to the bar, looking like he was going to kill someone if he didn’t get a glass filled to the rim in his hand soon.

“Rough night?” she asked as he drank his vodka rocks.

Will looked at her and arched his brow. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” Well. He had her there. “You okay?”

Karen shrugged. “At least we got a vacation out of all of this.” She didn’t know why she didn’t feel anything more than that in the moment. Maybe it would hit her in the morning, when she could take a step back and grasp what she had done. But now, she was just exhausted by it all.

Will scoffed into his drink. “Sure. What does it matter if a marriage casually gets destroyed? As long as we can gamble it out of our minds later.”

Her eyes grew wide. What the hell was  _ this _ about? He couldn’t possibly be that invested in her relationship with Lyle. God, he barely even knew the guy. And something told her that in spite of all the jabs they threw at each other, he would at the very least feign sympathy. This just didn’t feel like him. “Honey, what’s with you?” she asked before taking her olive between her teeth and sliding it off her toothpick.

“Nothing,” he said gruffly. And then two seconds later, “I just don’t get what makes him think I would be okay with trying to smooth over the fact that he cheated on her. Where the hell does he get off?”

Karen froze, feeling her heart drop to the floor. No. There was no way. He was a lot of things that Karen hated, but after everything he’s put her girl through, there was absolutely no way he would do this. Except he was  _ exactly _ the kind of person who would do this. She knew that. She figured it out the second she met him. And she could feel the guilt in the pit of her stomach over waiting too long to start that conversation with Grace. But it very quickly gave way to a wildfire of anger aimed in a certain doctor’s direction. “Who?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. She just wanted to hear him say it. She wanted it to hit the air so everything that started bubbling to the surface could be justified.

Will sighed. “Leo got off the phone with Grace a few minutes ago and…”

Karen saw Grace’s husband come into view and could no longer hear what Will was saying. She saw red, heard everything she wanted to say to the guy--everything she wanted to say  _ about _ the guy over the last couple of years but couldn’t--screaming in her mind. And she let go as soon as he got within earshot.

“You son of a bitch.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Will snap to attention, with a confused look on his face before he saw who she was glaring at. “Karen…” he said softly, sounding like he didn’t want to stop her but thought it would look bad if he didn’t at least try.

“Are you kidding me?!” Karen knew her voice was getting louder by the second, and she didn’t care. She liked the way it made Leo shrink into himself whenever she hit a sharp syllable. “Do you understand how hard she tried to make it work over there? How many times she called me because she didn’t know what to do? And it’s not like I had any answers. God knows I’m the last person who should be giving out marriage advice. But at least  _ someone _ was there for her!” She could feel Will’s eyes on her, and she realized that Grace never told Will about their phone calls, even after she came home. But she was in a groove now; there was no stopping her. “Let me guess: you were lonely, you needed company, someone who would listen to you, blah blah blah. God, those excuses are old. Did you for one second think about the woman who was waiting for you in New York? Or about how she followed you across the world for apparently no reason, since you never saw her? Or were you just too busy scouting out your little fling to care?” 

The absolute gall Leo had to speak up right now astounded her. “Karen, I don’t think you know…”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. You don’t get to play that card, honey. I know all about you. I’ve been married to men like you. And you wanna know what else I know? You were saving lives, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t give you a pass to send your wife home so you can hop in the sack with your girlfriend.”

“Karen.” She heard Will’s voice, breaking through her own thoughts. She felt his touch on her arm, gentle against the harshness in the air. The sincere concern in each was enough to make her take a step back. “Are you okay?” he asked again. She took a look at Will, his eyes so genuine that she had to look away. She glanced at Leo, who looked like he was trying his hardest to disappear from his spot. She wondered how much she overplayed her hand. And suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere but here.

“Yeah, honey. I just…” She felt her tongue stumbling over her words for a moment. “I just need to walk it off.” She downed the last of her martini and raced out of the reception.

She knew retreating to her suite would be a risk. At best, she would have the place to herself where she could sit with what had just happened. At worst, she would open the door to find Lyle--maybe packing his things, maybe refusing to budge--and she’d have to face her own problems before she wanted to. When she opened the door, her eyes swept the living room and came up empty. “Finney?” she called out, tiptoeing towards the bedroom like she had entered a minefield. When she didn’t find him, she let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding and sat down on the bed. If she were back home, she’d know exactly what to do to distract herself. She’d figure out how long it would be until she could sit herself down at her desk at Grace Adler Designs. She’d take solace in the office and the redhead who ran it once she got there. She’d be grateful that the redhead who ran it could give her mind a break. She really wanted a break right now.

She really wanted to hear Grace’s voice. Maybe they could be each other’s distraction.

Karen reached for the phone before she saw the clock on the nightstand flash midnight and fully realized what she was doing. It was three in the morning in New York. Grace had to be sleeping by now, if not because of the hour, then because of emotional exhaustion. And she didn’t want to be the one to rattle her awake. She sighed as she lay down on the bed, cursing herself for doing it before she had the chance to change out of her wedding dress. But she wasn’t about to move anytime soon. She felt her nerves start to kick into overdrive without being able to pinpoint the exact reason why (she had so many to choose from), drumming her fingers against her thigh just so she had something to do. God, she couldn’t stand how quiet it was right now. She was right in the heart of this city, it shouldn’t be this quiet. It shouldn’t be…

The ring of her suite’s telephone pierced through her, and once the initial relief that a distraction came through subsided, she furrowed her brow trying to figure out who the hell would be calling her right now. “Hello?” she asked when she picked up the phone.

“Hey, Karen.”

The rush she felt when she heard the redhead on the other end made it hard to speak for a moment. “Gracie,” she managed in a whisper, before finding her voice. “Honey, what are you doing? It’s three in the morning, you should be sleeping.”

“I just, um…” Grace’s voice sounded thick with tears, and for a second, her rage towards Leo came back full force, because she knew he was the reason for this. “I just wanted to say congratulations. You and Lyle, you know…”

The redhead didn’t know. Of course she didn’t know. Her own marriage had just imploded on her; there was no reason for her to notice another one imploding a couple thousand miles away. She almost didn’t want to say anything; sure, everyone inside the ballroom of Caesars Palace heard it when she said it, but to tell Grace now, when it was just the two of them, made it seem so real. And she wasn’t the biggest fan of real at the moment. But she knew it was going to get back to Grace eventually, and it might as well come from her. “Grace...there’s no marriage. I left him at the reception.”

“What?” The lack of surprise in her voice...Karen couldn’t tell if she was just weary, or if she really saw it coming. “Why?”

Karen shrugged even though she knew Grace couldn’t see it. “I finally realized you were right.”

“Oh, Kare.” The sympathy in her words overwhelmed the dark haired woman. “I didn’t want to be.” There was silence as Karen struggled to respond, wondering if Grace found it just as difficult before she heard, “You really shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

“Oh come on, Grace,” she said, trying to play it off as nothing. “I’m in Vegas. It can’t be  _ that _ hard to find someone ready and willing. I probably don’t even have to leave Caesars Palace! I could walk out of this suite right now and two seconds later find...I don’t know...Celine Dion’s arm choreographer walking around somewhere. Next thing you know, we’re making out in the casino. Easy-squeezie.”

“Excuse me?” She could hear the shock in Grace’s voice and wished she knew what part of that deserved that kind of reaction. And then, as if Grace read her mind, “Celine Dion’s arm doesn’t need a choreographer. Celine Dion’s arm is all heart.” Karen laughed as she put her free hand up in surrender, as though Grace was in the room with her. She swore she could hear the redhead laughing too, but if she was, it died down before Karen could be sure. Grace took a beat. “But that’s not the kind of alone I mean,” she said, so soft it was almost a whisper.

Karen felt Grace’s concern coursing through her body. “I know it’s not, honey,” she murmured. “But I’ve got Will and Jack here. I’ll be okay.” God, she hated that. She hated that she stole the guys away for a weekend, leaving Grace to drown in her crisis alone. She wanted so badly to fix it. “Besides...you shouldn’t be worrying about me right now.”

“What do you mean?”

She wished Grace would stop doing that. Pretending like she’s fine, like the reason she called really was to congratulate Karen instead of looking for a shoulder to cry on and an answer on what happens next. It wasn’t as though she didn’t admire the effort; she knew she pulled the same stunts and she knew it probably irritated the hell out of the people who just want to help. But Grace couldn’t possibly believe that she didn’t know. Maybe part of Karen poured into her in the years they’ve spent together, the part that held up walls that should have been demolished a long time ago. She wished that part would spill back out again. “Gracie,” she said softly. “I know about Leo. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh.” Silence. And then, “Well...I told you before that it felt like it was over.” The defeat was overwhelming. Karen looked down and saw that she was drawing circles with her thumb on the part of the bed where Grace’s hand should have been.

“But honey, no one deserves for it to end like that. Especially not when you tried so hard.” She started to feel the anger rise again, tried to stomp it down so she could stay calm for Grace. “God, it felt so good to watch him squirm,” she muttered.

“Wait, what?” Grace’s surprise made Karen realized she had said it out loud. “What happened?”

Karen sighed, knowing that if she didn’t tell her, then Will certainly would. “Honey, it’s not that big a deal, it’s just...he pisses me off so much, I had to say something.”

She could swear she heard the smallest hint of a smile in Grace’s voice. “Did you really?”

“Well...more like...pointedly shouted?” There it was. The tiniest laugh on the other end of the phone, but it was there. “I couldn’t help it!” She started giggling in spite of herself. “He  _ did _ look like he was going to dissolve into thin air for a second. It was great.”

Maybe Grace was starting to relax. Karen hoped she was. “I kind of wish I could have seen it,” the redhead said.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll still have a few bullets in my belt when I come home. I’ll save them for you.”

“My hero.” Karen tried to keep her heart from tripping over those words that she didn’t notice the way Grace had gotten quiet at first.

It was stunning, the way the silence fell on them so quickly. But you can only dance around the situation for so long before your legs start to give, before you run out of breath and have to stop in your tracks, before you have to stare it in the eye and wait for the next move. Karen wished she knew what to do. She wished she knew the right turn of phrase. But she knew that deep down, Grace still had love for him, whatever her reasons were. By the time Karen’s first two marriages ended, she was no longer in love (if she was ever really in love to begin with), and when she left Stan, the love had blurred so much that it might as well not have been there. She didn’t know how to help someone whose heart was still inexplicably in it.

Well. That’s not entirely true, Karen. You could lend an ear. You could listen. It may not be much, but it’s a start.

“You know what the best part of my marriage was this year?” Grace asked suddenly.

Karen couldn’t believe she even had a good part of her marriage this year. But she swallowed that thought down before it could hit the air. “What’s that, honey?” she asked.

“Staying in that cabin with you.”

The dark haired woman felt her nerves start to kick around in her core. There was so much of that trip that was a disaster. The fact that Leo was the reason they were there in the first place. The fact that they got the address wrong and accidentally broke into someone else’s cabin. The way the light went out of Grace’s eyes when she thought Leo was keeping secrets from her. The way the light never fully came back as Grace started thinking about what it meant when she was so quick to believe his secrecy. But then there was the other side of the coin. The way Grace’s eyes were laser-focused on her every time she spoke. The way Grace would fall into her when she laughed. The way Grace insisted they share the same bed. The way they couldn’t go to sleep without a goodnight kiss, and the way Grace seemed to linger longer and longer with each one. It was crazy how vivid it all was in her mind.

It probably didn’t help that she wasn’t able to stop thinking about it since they came back from that cabin.

“I know a lot happened on that trip,” Grace said, making Karen wonder if her thoughts somehow escaped her mind, “but at the end of the day, it just felt so good to be with someone who knew me. Sometimes I think you know me better than he ever did.” She stopped like she was really considering what she just said. “You probably know me better than most people ever could.”

There were times when Karen thought she had Grace completely figured out. The redhead would hit all her marks while the dark haired woman would smile about how satisfying it was to see her hit them. But then there were times when Grace would get a little too close, say something Karen didn’t realize she wanted so badly to hear. Something like how the redhead thought she was incredible. Something like how she knew the redhead better than most people ever could. And it made her question whether the thoughts that would dance around her mind from time to time also danced around Grace’s. “So you know what that means, honey,” she said, hoping it sounded like a joke, wondering how convincing it was. “You and I are eventually going to end up riding into the sunset together.”

“Run away from it all, just you and me? Don’t tempt me like that.” The smile in the redhead’s words was unmistakable. The reason behind the smile was a little fuzzy. Karen wished she had the strength to test the waters, but the waters were rising, and she was already neck deep. She knew that if she spoke, she would likely drown.

Grace drew a long breath, murmured into the phone like she didn’t mind that Karen had let the matter drop. “Tell me something to take my mind off of this.”

The request was so simple, so quiet; it crushed the dark haired woman. She hated being so far away. She hated that Grace was so alone right now. All she wanted to do was bring the redhead a genuine distraction, the smallest sliver of light that could peek through the dark. But it wasn’t like tonight had been kind to either of them. It wasn’t like she could search the depths of the evening for something halfway decent Leo did, or talk about how much fun Will had tonight, or that Jack…

Jack. That was it. Grace was never going to believe it; it was perfect.

“Oh wait, honey, I’ve got one.” She hoped Grace picked up on the way her tone brightened. “You wanna know what you missed tonight? Jack’s going on tour with Jennifer Lopez.”

A beat of silence, and then, “Okay, I’ll give you points for creativity, but I didn’t mean you should just make stuff up, Karen.”

“Gracie, I swear to god! Jack’s her new back-up dancer.”

“I don’t even…how the hell did that happen?!”

Karen delighted in relaying the whole story, felt a rush every time Grace laughed like her heart was actually in it. She could hear the redhead’s voice start to get a little more vibrant, a little less monotone. She could hear her relax as their conversation fractured into a million different tangents, and she was so relieved that Grace found at least an ounce of peace tonight. Eventually, Karen heard Grace’s voice grow heavy with sleep even though she refused to hang up the phone. Eventually, Karen realized she had been talking for stretches without hearing a response. Eventually, Karen murmured Grace’s name before realizing she had fallen asleep. She took solace in the fact that the redhead would finally get some rest. “Goodnight, Gracie,” she said softly before she hung up the phone and finally shrugged out of her wedding dress. She tossed it to the corner of the room and left it there; if she happened to forget to pack it when she left, so be it. She climbed into bed and burrowed herself into the sheets.

She closed her eyes thinking that she couldn’t wait to just go home and see her girl.


	4. Dirty Songs for Sad Lovers

_**“I put on a record,** _   
_**It was called ‘Dirty Songs for Sad Lovers’** _   
_**And it wasn’t long before you called** _   
_**And said, ‘Please come over’”** _

_ 2004 _

They rode off into the sunset together, knowing full well they’d have to come back in two weeks.

Karen didn’t think twice about asking Grace the second she got back to New York. She had a Hawaiian honeymoon that would soon be going to waste, and they both had excellent reasons to get the hell away from the East Coast for a little while; it made perfect sense to turn that trip into a healing vacation far from the men who failed them. And Grace seemed all too eager to escape Manhattan; the way her face lit up the second Karen suggested a getaway said everything the redhead didn’t. By the time they boarded the plane, the dark haired woman could see the way Grace’s body relaxed with the promise of sunshine and seclusion. By the time they checked into their hotel suite, she couldn’t imagine taking this trip with anyone who wasn’t her girl.

She never stopped to consider the implications of staying in a space that was so clearly meant for two people in love; Grace had the same look of wonder in her eyes that she got the minute she set foot in Karen’s suite at the Palace nearly a year and a half ago, and Karen realized she missed the sight of it so much that nothing else mattered. But when they finally decided to explore the island and made their way to the hotel’s exit, the concierge stopped them to tell them how happy and lovely they looked together. Karen took a breath to correct him before she had the wind knocked out of her by Grace. Because Grace surprised her so casually. Grace was so confident about it.

Grace took her hand and held it tightly, thanking him on their way out of the building.

“Honey,” Karen managed as she fought off the fluttering in her chest, “he thinks we’re a couple.”

The redhead’s smile was blinding. “Karen, he thinks we’re a  _ cute _ couple,” she said. And she nodded like there was no use in correcting him, like that was the definitive end of the discussion. So Karen let it go.

When they came back to their suite, they found a bottle of champagne chilling in the sitting area next to an abundance of fresh strawberries, a celebratory gift courtesy of the hotel. Grace laughed as she popped the bottle, champagne spilling onto her fingers before she poured it into their flutes; when Karen grabbed her glass, she felt the sweet stickiness of the champagne on the redhead’s skin. “Oh my god, I can’t believe they just gave this to us!” Grace exclaimed before they toasted. “Clearly we’re milking this couple thing for all it’s worth.”

“Gracie, it’s not like we’re strapped for cash here. I’ve got us covered.”

“Yeah, but everything just tastes better when it’s free. If we lay it on thick enough, who knows what we could get out of it?” She smirked before she picked up a strawberry and took a bite, her eyes full of possibility. “So, what do you say?” she asked. “You wanna be my wife?”

Karen tried to ignore the way her heart picked up its pace when it heard the question. “As long as I don’t have to take your last name,” she joked.

Grace’s smirk turned into a full on grin. “Deal.”

And just like that, they spent two weeks as newlyweds.

Karen knew Grace was never one to turn away an opportunity to score free food, and she figured that was the only reason why she was playing along, creating a fake love story to tell from their actual history so seamlessly, Karen marveled at how easy it could be. But when the initial wave of champagne and desserts and private candlelight dinners stopped, the redhead didn’t. She still held Karen’s hand, she still made a big show of affection every time someone walked by them. She still tossed her hair Karen’s way when she laughed. She still kept up her end of their reputation for being happy and lovely. She still lingered when they kissed. And sometimes, they weren’t even in the public eye when she lingered. Sometimes she kissed goodnight like it was the last time she would ever kiss like that, and Karen wondered if she really was that swept up in the charade or if it was something else entirely. Sometimes she would murmur something like “What is it about you that makes me never want to leave?” in the middle of the night with no warning, and it made Karen believe that it really  _ was _ something else entirely.

They didn’t say too much the morning they left, too disappointed that their vacation was ending to try to fill the silence. But when they were 30,000 feet in the air, inching closer and closer to home, Karen felt Grace’s fingers weave between her own, locking her hold in place. She couldn’t help but feel like they were trying to hold onto this feeling, to bring it back with them to Manhattan.

It was perfect, absolutely perfect, one of those things they could look back on and feel nothing but peace and love as they asked each other, “Remember when?” Which was why she couldn’t figure out how she went from paradise with her girl to fielding a phone call from Will inviting her to some ill-advised show of support at a Chinese restaurant, expecting her to push lo mein noodles around her plate in silence while she watched Grace make the biggest mistake of her life.

Karen was at a loss. The girl who wouldn’t let go of her hand in Hawaii couldn’t possibly be the same girl who would give Leo another chance. Not after he cheated. Not after Cambodia. Not after a million other things that were fighting for a clear shot from Karen’s lips to Grace’s ear. She kept her eyes on the redhead from across the table, but the redhead wouldn’t--or couldn’t--meet her gaze. Grace had to know, right? She had to know this was pointless, the same way everyone else at the table knew it was pointless (except, of course, the man seated next to Grace who was foolishly clinging to the hope that his wife would soon put her wedding ring back on). So why wasn’t she stopping it? Why wasn’t the way the awkwardness made the air so thick or the way Leo’s guilt made him fidget in his seat or Will’s outburst when he realized he couldn’t pretend everything was fine the thing that made her realize there was nothing to be gained from this?

What was it going to take?

After yet another unsettling lull in conversation--Karen stopped counting them a long time ago--Grace excused herself to the restroom, and the dark haired woman finally found her window. She waited a few seconds before announcing that she was going to join Grace, making her escape from the dinner party from hell to find the redhead hunched over the sink as she took a few deep breaths. She watched as Grace turned her head to meet her eyes for the first time that evening.

“Why is this so hard?” Grace asked, barely managing a whisper.

Karen realized that Will’s wasn’t the only short fuse at the table a second too late. “Is that a serious question?” she asked with a little too much impatience in her voice.

Grace’s eyes grew wide at Karen’s tone. She looked like she was trying to say something, but could only shrug instead.

“When did he get to you?” the dark haired woman pressed on. “What did he say to make you think that this could possibly be a good idea?”

She could see Grace’s struggle to keep her eyes on her. “After we got back from Hawaii, he wouldn’t stop calling,” Grace murmured. “And then he started knocking on our door. And I thought I could just end it if I let him say his piece and go, like he would leave me alone if I just heard him out and told him no anyway. But then he left, and I couldn’t stop thinking about...I don’t know, how  _ sad _ he looked. And I kept thinking that maybe there was a way to salvage this. Maybe I can’t see it yet, but what if it’s there, you know?” Karen watched as Grace’s fingers moved around the space where her wedding ring used to be. “I think I owe it to us to try.”

_ Us? _ Was she  _ trying _ to push Karen over the edge?

“Oh, for god’s sake, honey,” the dark haired woman sighed after she fought back a scoff, after she saw the wide-eyed look of surprise Grace wore, “he already threw away his chance to be an ‘Us’ with you again. You keep acting like cheating was the first bad thing he did, but what about the Palace? Huh? What about the cabin?” She paused for a moment, hoping that Grace taking a step away from her was her imagination. She tried to soften her voice, knowing she wasn’t entirely successful. “What about every single time you called me in tears from a million miles away? Do you really think that’s worth saving?”

The redhead took a beat before she furrowed her brow and asked softly, “Is this about Hawaii? About...how we were over there?”

Karen froze for a moment, torn between the sudden anger that flared up over Grace believing her best interest wasn’t priority and sudden wave of nerves that crashed over the slightest possibility that Grace might be right. She did her best to recover. “Of course this is not about Hawaii,” she said, not caring about how true it may or may not be. “This is about the fact that you owe it to yourself to be with someone who actually gives a damn about you. And this is about the fact that you don’t owe him anything. All of the things you told me during your marriage aren’t going to magically go away because he shared some sub-par Peking duck with your friends.” She felt something reach her throat--it couldn’t be tears, that wasn’t her style--and she tried her best to swallow it before she spoke again. “It’s your decision, Grace. And you know I love you...but don’t expect me to be there when it all turns to crap, because I don’t think I can watch you go through that again.”

She didn’t give Grace a chance to respond before she rushed out of the restroom to join the others, plastering on the best mask she could on the way.

Karen stayed silent for the rest of the dinner, barely making eye contact with anyone, barely registering it when she felt Jack rest his hand on her shoulder and heard him ask if she was okay, barely nodding in response. She raced out of the restaurant the second she could, knowing that the silence of the manse would only amplify the thoughts running through her head, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone watching her as she went through the wringer. When she got home, she made herself a drink and started pacing through the first floor of her home, thinking that if she just kept moving, she could eventually find the path Grace took that led her back to Leo. Maybe if she turned here, she’d discover the turns Grace made that led her to let him speak. Maybe if she turned there, she’d find the twisted way Grace took to telling him there might still be a chance. Maybe if she circled around this way, she’d figure out the reasons Grace so willingly circled back to him. But all these turns made her head spin in the worst way, and nothing made sense.

She stopped in her tracks in the foyer, realizing it was pointless. She would never be able to find the path Grace took. And she was even more lost now than when she started.

Karen sighed and started towards the stairs with every intention of bringing her drink to bed with her when the doorbell rang. For a moment, she considered ignoring it, thinking it would bring about Jack and a level of enthusiasm she just wasn’t in the mood for. But then she heard the tentative knocking that became louder and more insistent with each second. And by the time she opened the door to find her redhead on the other side, all the annoyance over having her wallowing interrupted evaporated. “I should know by now that you’re always right,” Grace said in a hush, as if she ran the risk of waking anyone up inside the empty manse. “I just couldn’t stay with him.”

The dark haired woman couldn’t speak for a moment, stunned by the fact that Grace was really here, stunned by the fact that Grace really left. “So you ran away from Brooklyn?” she finally managed to ask.

Grace nodded. “Pretty much. And then I ran away from Will’s because I realized I didn’t really want to be there either.” She shifted her gaze down to her feet. “But if you’re still upset with me, I can go.”

Karen studied her for a moment before she reached out to lift the redhead’s chin up, so their eyes could meet. “Just come inside, Gracie,” she murmured before pulling her girl in and wrapping her free arm around her.

It was crazy, the way they didn’t need to speak to get to the point, the way their precedent was set by Leo. Karen knew that. But at least the precedent was set. She watched Grace make her way upstairs to the master bedroom the same way she always walked to any bed she decided to claim as theirs. She watched Grace crawl under the covers and look back up at her with eyes that were slowly starting to clear away the sadness. And when she joined the redhead, she could have sworn that out of the corner of her eye, she saw her smile. She reached for the lamp on the nightstand to put an end to their rollercoaster night.

“Did you really mean what you said tonight?” Grace asked after Karen turned off the light.

“That I couldn’t watch you go through that again?” the dark haired woman murmured as Grace burrowed into her arms like it was second nature. She took in the way Grace’s warmth radiated off of her and let out a breath of relief.

“That you wouldn’t be there for me if I did.”

Karen rested her lips on the crown of Grace’s head for a moment, considering how much of the truth she should really give her. “I might have tried to keep my distance at first,” she said softly, “but...honey, you know I could never leave you alone like that. I would have caved eventually.”

“Good,” Grace said, her voice slightly muffled from the way she buried her face into Karen. “If I hadn’t have left tonight, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

It didn’t matter that Karen didn’t quite know how to respond to that. It didn’t matter that she didn’t quite know what that meant in the grand scheme of their friendship. It didn’t matter that she let the silence linger. It didn’t matter that Grace was so concerned about something that was never going to happen, and it didn’t matter that there was once a chance that it could happen.

It didn’t matter that a few minutes ago, Karen thought she had lost her girl to Brooklyn.

Grace was here now. She was in this bed. She was the one who climbed in first. She was curled into Karen as her breathing evened out into sleep, her hold on the dark haired woman secure even as she fell deeper into slumber. She chose this as her refuge.

That was all that mattered.

**********

“God, it’s weird seeing you with a bottle of beer in your hand. It’s like you’re slumming it. Go make yourself a martini or something.”

Karen laughed as she tossed the bottle cap into the waste bin and settled into the accent chair she dragged from the corner of the office to the center. She watched Grace find a place on the floor and prop her back against the chair and grabbed the hand the redhead rested on her seat. “Oh, how quickly you forget,” she chirped. “Remember a few years ago, the night you invited me over because I was so sick of Stan and just needed some time away from him? I was slumming it then,” she smirked.

“That doesn’t count, that night was mostly tequila,” Grace said with a smile in her voice, whether from the memory or the way the air just felt light right now, Karen couldn’t be sure. “I can’t believe you remember that. We certainly drank way too much to remember that.”

“Of course I remember, Gracie. You really came through for me that night.”

“Not nearly as much as you’ve come through for me lately.” Grace took a sip from her bottle before she continued. “Maybe that’s why I kept going there; it’s not fair that I keep burdening you with my own stuff like that.”

“Who are you kidding, honey? You kept going there for the free donuts.” Grace whipped her head around to face Karen with a look of false shock that quickly crumbled under her smile. When Karen first learned that the redhead had been crashing AA meetings for the food and the therapy, she had to admit she was a little hurt. Not because the environment itself went against her personal belief system; although that little tidbit wasn’t ideal, it also wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. What hurt was the idea of Grace talking through her problems with someone who wasn’t her. Karen hated what Leo put her through, but she liked being the one Grace trusted with the weight of it all. And when Grace finally backed off of the meetings, Karen felt a wave of relief flow through her. All they really needed was each other, anyway. She knew she could be enough for Grace. And she knew--or at the very least, she hoped--that Grace knew it, too. “You know you could never be a burden to me,” she said softly, letting it float in the air between them as she held Grace in her gaze as long as she needed to for her to understand.

There was something in the redhead’s eyes that Karen couldn’t quite place. But then Grace’s laugh broke the silence and her concentration, and Karen felt her lips start to curl into a curious smile. “Did you know you’re the only person who’s always there for me?” Grace asked, as if she had just made some huge realization.

“Oh, come on, Gracie, that is such a lie! Will’s there for you.”

Grace shook her head. “Not the way you are. He tends to sugarcoat things to make me feel better. You always tell me the truth. You make the truth feel safe.” She paused for a moment like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to say what was in her head. “You make  _ me _ feel safe.” She tugged on Karen’s hand like she wanted the dark haired woman to come down to her level, and Karen slid off of the chair and came to rest beside her. “You make me feel like I can tell you anything.” Karen couldn’t take her eyes off their hands, still woven together, and she felt the nerves in her core start to wake up once she realized what Grace started doing.

Drawing circles with her thumb. Karen always did it because she knew it soothed Grace. So why the hell was it trying to push her off a cliff right now?

“Um…” Karen gave herself a moment while her mind scrambled to keep it together, amazed at how quickly Grace was able to push any coherent string of words out of her head. “Like what?” she whispered, unable to look at the redhead; she knew that if she me Grace’s gaze, what was left of her resolve would crumble into dust.

“Like...I keep thinking about Hawaii. How easy it was to be like that with you. How it didn’t feel like we were lying.” The way Grace’s voice started to shake made Karen finally turn her head to face her girl. And when she did, the look she met was one that could have easily knocked her to the ground if she wasn’t already sitting down. She had never seen her look so intensely serious before. “How maybe  _ that’s _ the way it should have been all along.”

Karen held her breath for a moment. There were a million things that she could blame this on, to prove that Grace didn’t really mean it. The beer was making her say these things. Thinking about the way Leo treated her made her overanalyze the way Karen treated her. She was only saying what she thought Karen wanted to hear. But Grace hadn’t even finished her first bottle yet. And she never seemed to overanalyze the way Karen treated her before, even though the way Leo treated her never really changed. And there was no way Grace could know what Karen wanted to hear. Even Karen didn’t fully realize how much she wanted to hear it. Still, she stayed silent, giving Grace ample opportunity to take it all back, to laugh it off and change the subject. Because she couldn’t believe it was real. She couldn’t believe Grace would really say it. She fully expected her to back down.

Grace didn’t back down. She didn't break her gaze. She didn’t lay the blame anywhere.

She only moved in closer to Karen.

“Honey,” the dark haired woman murmured when the redhead’s lips were within an inch of hers, “do you realize how quickly this could blow up in our faces?” Her voice had the slightest crack in it, and in that moment she couldn’t understand how she didn’t shatter completely. She couldn’t understand why she was so eager to give Grace a way out, like she still wasn’t convinced that Grace didn’t know exactly what she was doing, didn’t know exactly what she was making Karen feel. Grace knew; she had to. This wasn’t something you just threw out into the air without thinking it through. This wasn’t something you did to seven years of friendship without weighing all the options first.

This was something you did knowing full well you were about to change your life.

Grace offered a sly half smile as her eyes lit up like she had heard everything going through Karen’s mind. “What a perfect way to burn,” she said before her kiss crashed into the dark haired woman.

A million thoughts raced around inside of Karen, each one pushing against the other for attention, each one causing the most brilliant traffic jam in her head. Grace smelled like rosewater perfume and infinite possibilities. Her lips tasted like cheap beer, but it was strangely sweet. Her lips tasted like home. Her kiss felt different this time. Her kiss felt the way Karen always hoped her kiss would feel. This was how everything should always feel, the heat of those surprising sparks of light warming her skin, the impact of the brazen confidence she didn’t even know Grace had. Karen wondered if it would feel this way the next time. She didn’t stop to think that there might not be a next time, that this moment was a fluke, that she should take it all in now before it became a distant memory that neither of them would be able to clearly recall in a few years’ time, just dismiss it as one of those times a kiss pushed the boundaries of their friendship without ever breaking them. She was so certain it would happen again, because she was so certain that this was what she always wanted.

Why did it take so long to admit that to herself?

She could feel Grace’s fingertips dancing at the collar of her sweater as she deepened her kiss and knew that she would give herself over to that touch in a heartbeat. She would lift her arms and let Grace slide her sweater off her body, wouldn’t be satisfied until the redhead’s lips had traveled every inch of her. She would pull Grace on top of her and look up at the wildfire vision hovering above and know this was exactly where she was supposed to be, where she always should have been, where she never wanted to leave. She let herself slide her arms around Grace’s waist to pull her in, felt the way the she smiled against her lips as she moved in closer. She felt the butterflies in her core crash into each other with an energy that let her know that it didn’t stem from nerves, and it didn’t stem from fear; this was a flurry of anticipation, a surge of hope, a flood of sheer happiness washing over her. Nothing could take this feeling away.

Nothing, that was, except the freight elevator coming to life behind them.

They heard the mechanical whirr and froze in place for a moment, as if neither of them truly believed their ears. But then Grace pulled away, bringing Karen’s heart to her throat as they stared at the elevator door, waiting for Will or Jack or even some unexpected client--it wasn’t like Karen ever kept up with Grace’s calendar; for all she knew, there could have been a late meeting on the schedule for today--to burst through the door and make them explain themselves. Because she saw Grace’s wide-eyed look before the redhead shifted her gaze to the elevator. And she knew she probably looked flushed, breathless, nearly guilty. Even if no one saw what they had done, they would still need to give up a few answers. And it scared the hell out of her.

She wasn’t ready to put words to this feeling yet.

Soon, the elevator slowed to a stop on a different floor. Soon, it had fallen silent long enough for Grace and Karen to feel safe. Soon, Karen started thinking about all the implications of what they had done, the implications of what they were about to do. Soon, she got so far deep into her head that she was convinced she didn’t deserve all those implications. Soon, she started thinking that if she was scared, Grace had to be, too. Soon, she was beginning to think she  _ should _ feel guilty, like she had just taken advantage of Grace even though Grace was the one who started all of this; sure, they were both fresh off of their divorces, but the difference was that Grace was in love with her ex-husband at one point, and sometimes you do reckless things when you try to forget. Soon, she found herself backpedaling out of instinct.

“I think,” she said, nearly a whisper, as she pulled back from the redhead, “maybe that was a sign. We shouldn’t...” God, she couldn’t even say it, what made her think they could possibly do it? “We just shouldn’t.”

She couldn’t look her in the eye; she didn’t want to know if Grace started to have second thoughts, if she realized she was relieved to have been interrupted. She didn’t want to know if Grace was able to see how shaken she was. “No one saw us,” Grace said softly, although Karen couldn’t quite place the tone.

“Honey, you can’t tell me you weren’t worried that someone would.” Karen didn’t want to admit that she was worried, too; she couldn’t quite give herself over to that kind of insecurity yet. “Maybe that should tell us something.” She rushed to get up from the floor, almost tossing her empty beer bottle onto her desk as she moved to grab her coat and purse. She needed to get out of there before the walls closed in on her completely; she could feel the room getting smaller, she could feel it get harder and harder to breathe. Her mind raced to the worst possible scenario and convinced her it was the truth, convinced her that there was nothing she could do but flee the scene of the crime and never speak of it again. So she fled. And as she threw her coat on and walked out the door, she swore to herself that she would never put a voice to this memory, that eventually, it would fade into the background until she couldn’t tell it apart from all the other times they kissed, all the other times they got a little too close. It shouldn’t be that hard to do; this certainly wasn’t the first time she left work in the middle of the afternoon.

She couldn’t tell if she actually heard Grace call her name as she left, or if her mind was just hoping a little too loudly that the redhead would want her to stay.

When she got back to the manse, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was crawling out of her skin. She couldn’t sit still, found it impossible to keep her mind off of what happened, found herself starting to be plagued with regret. Not for her part in it all, which was the surprising thing; after running out of the office, she figured that the unnerving guilt she felt in Grace’s presence would have carried over, but it didn’t. No, the more she thought about it, the more she started to regret the fact that she left. She knew the wounds Leo left behind were still fresh, and she knew Grace would probably do anything to just get a little relief. But who’s to say she would use Karen like that? Who’s to say this wasn’t merely the culmination of years of elastic boundaries and indistinguishable lines? What if the kiss was real? What if the words were true?

What if Grace meant it all?

What if she just missed her chance?

Eventually, she noticed that the sun had set, and she wondered how long she had actually been fidgeting like this. She felt her nerves still coursing steadily through her body and wondered if she would be able to sleep tonight. She was already on the edge with her toes over the cliff; how could she rest when she was trying to keep herself from jumping into a nosedive? Maybe she should have someone here to hold her back. Maybe she should pick up the phone and get a hold of Jack. She couldn’t possibly tell him what was going on--she couldn’t do that to Grace or to herself--but it wasn’t like he was going to ask. She could just put on her mask, tell him she was bored and needed his energy, and he would come running to her like he always did. It might be enough to keep her mind off of Grace for a little while.

She knew her thoughts would eventually go racing back to the redhead, the way they always seemed to do. But right now, in this moment, she would give anything for a distraction. She would give anything to stop feeling like she was drowning in regret.

Karen rushed to the nearest phone and held it in her hands, ready to dial the number that would lead her to her best friend when the ring shattered the silence of the manse and jolted the dark haired woman. Her nerves shook her hold on the phone. Her mind was hoping that Jack had somehow picked up on her need for a distraction. Her heart was hoping for someone else. She took a moment to try to steady herself before she answered the phone.

“Hello?” she said, nearly a whisper.

“Will’s staying over at Vince’s tonight,” Grace murmured, cutting directly to the chase. “Please...just come over.”

“Grace…” No. Don’t finish that thought, Karen. Stop objecting. She wants you. You want this. Let yourself want this.

“Please. I’ll be up for a while. Just think about it.” She hung up before Karen had a chance to respond, like she was expecting the dark haired woman to say no.

But Karen had one foot out the door the second she heard that Will was out of the picture tonight.

**********

She knew that later on, when she would think back on this night, she would have to keep telling herself that it wasn’t a dream. She would have to keep telling herself that she felt everything, and that it felt extraordinary. She felt the wood of the front door against her fist as she knocked with all the strength she had, but knocking so gently, she didn’t think Grace would be able to hear. She felt the heat of Grace’s gaze when the redhead opened the door, the charge of Grace’s touch as she pulled Karen inside by her wrist. She felt the way Grace’s rosewater perfume and infinite possibilities went to her head faster this time because of how much she had been craving them. She felt the way Grace held on to her as they kissed in the living room, tight and close, like she couldn’t stand to let even an inch of space separate them. She felt the way Grace tugged at her to lead her to the bedroom without ever letting her lips break their kiss.

She felt alive. She didn’t think there was ever a time when she felt this alive.

They didn’t speak, but Karen didn’t think they needed to (if she was being honest, she probably couldn’t if she tried); Grace got her point across pretty clearly through the fireworks in her fingertips. The redhead pulled Karen on top of her as they fell onto the mattress, her smile igniting Karen’s skin as she pressed it to the dark haired woman’s neck and sighed, her hands guiding Karen’s hands underneath the fabric of her shirt, her body rising to the touch. She pulled her kiss away from Karen’s skin and looked up at the dark haired woman with the most encouraging anticipation in her eyes. And Karen knew she was close to crossing the one line between them that could lead to disaster, to burning bridges and severed ties and the very real threat of all the reasons they’ve stopped themselves in the past coming to destroy them.

And she went running past it anyway.

Karen straddled Grace’s hips and nodded her head, beckoning the redhead to lift her body so she could slide her shirt off and toss it to the floor. She felt the electricity of the discovery that Grace wasn’t wearing a bra mix with the charge of Grace’s fingers as they tugged at the cashmere of her sweater. In one swift motion, Karen pulled it over her head and off her body before diving down to Grace’s level, her lips crash landing against her girl’s. She felt Grace reach around to the clasp of her bra, heard herself moan as the redhead’s nails scratched her skin in her attempts to get rid of the lace. When she pulled away from Grace’s lips, she was able to take in the bareness of her, to truly get a glimpse of how stunning this woman was. This woman who had the capacity to shatter everything she thought she knew about her world. This woman who felt like a gift she didn’t deserve. This woman whose eyes were roaming her curves, whose stare felt sublime against her skin.

“Oh my god,” Grace said, breathless and smiling. “How are you this beautiful?”

Karen couldn’t speak without the threat of tears, could only bend down to press a kiss to Grace’s lips and hope that it said everything she wanted it to. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone who supposedly loved her asked her a question like that. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone who supposedly loved her made her feel the way Grace did now, looking up at her with what could very easily be mistaken for awe (unless it really  _ was _ awe? Could it be?). But now, all of the ones who supposedly loved her didn’t matter anymore. As far as she was concerned, there was only Grace. That was how it always should have been. That was how it always should be.

God willing, that was how it always  _ would _ be.

With every kiss, she expected Grace to tell her to slow down, to stop entirely before they reached a point from which they could never return. And she would have slowed down, she would have stopped, she would have done anything Grace wanted her to. But with every kiss, Grace’s sighs got a little more passionate, her moans started to get a little more drawn out. She felt Grace fumbling with the button of her pants and reluctantly pulled away from her, falling back onto the mattress as she did away with the last bit of her clothing, racing back to her girl’s lips before traveling down her neck, her breasts, her torso, her navel. She drew her tongue along Grace’s skin as she undid the redhead’s pants and slid them off her body. And she froze. Not because she didn’t want this--god, she wanted this so much--but because she still couldn’t convince herself that Grace did. She still couldn’t convince herself that Grace knew what they were doing, what it would mean. She couldn’t help herself from giving the redhead one last out.

But Grace reached down and started running her fingers through Karen’s hair. Grace started guiding Karen’s head between her hips. Grace arched her back and gasped Karen’s name when she felt the dark haired woman’s tongue dancing circles. Grace begged her to keep going. And Karen couldn’t possibly deny her. She let her fingertips brush along the redhead’s thighs, making Grace tremble underneath her touch, and marveled at the way it filled her to know she was the one Grace was trembling for. She heard Grace’s breath become shorter and shorter, heard her moans become more and more vocal, felt her writhing against her tongue before it seemed like the surge in her core took over her being. And she couldn’t believe how brilliant it felt to give Grace this kind of pleasure.

She couldn’t believe the same circles she drew with her thumb to relax Grace could make her body taut, could make her cry out in ecstasy if they were drawn with her tongue.

She felt Grace’s body relax into the mattress before she moved to the other side of the bed, facing the redhead as she came to rest on the pillow. It was incredible, the way Grace shined in the afterglow. Incredible, the way her cheeks were flushed with the most radiant shade of pink, the way her tousled wildfire locks fell over her eyes when she turned to face Karen, the way she brushed them back as she moved in closer. Karen could feel the warmth of Grace’s body inviting her to wrap herself around her girl. And as she slid her arms around Grace’s waist, she found herself wanting so desperately to say the right thing, something that matched the way the air in the room felt, something that matched the way Grace made her feel. But she couldn’t stop the words from flying out of her mouth.

“That would have been so uncomfortable on the office floor.”

Good lord. What was wrong with her? How was she still able to crack a joke? Why would she want to? How was she still this nervous? She furrowed her brow, shutting her eyes so she couldn’t see Grace’s reaction. “I can’t believe I said that,” she groaned before she registered the fact that Grace’s soft laughter surrounded them.

“I don’t know, I thought it was pretty cute,” the redhead smiled.

Karen opened her eyes to find what she swore was the most genuine look of affection (love? Was it possible that it was love?) staring back at her. And as she felt Grace’s touch brush a lock of hair behind her ear, she couldn’t believe that they had finally made it to this point, to this night, to this moment. When she walked into Grace Adler Designs seven years ago, she was looking for a place to rest her head. She was looking for someone to take a chance on her, for someone to peek behind the curtain and see her for who she really was. Looking back, she couldn’t explain why she thought that person would be Grace, why a stranger would want to take that step, melt her heart, make her feel. But she was drawn to her before they even met; there was no use in fighting it.

And she was glad she didn’t. Because look how wonderful everything seemed now. Look how wonderful life could be.

“Gracie…” she started, wanting to put a voice to it all.

“Shhh…” Grace gently pressed her finger to Karen’s lips. “Hold that thought.” She let her finger linger along the dark haired woman’s lips for a moment before she enveloped them in her kiss, and let her touch travel the length of Karen’s body. Karen gasped into Grace’s mouth as she felt the redhead discover how wet she had become. The way Grace moved against her scrambled every clear thought she had in her mind into oblivion, jumbled every word on her tongue into one long moan as she threw her head back.

“Don’t look away,” Grace whispered, that glorious smirk of hers coming to play. “I want to see you.”

Karen tried her best to nod in response and keep her eyes locked on the redhead’s, but the way Grace’s fingers were moving between her legs made it nearly impossible. The way Grace kept looking at her made every sensation feel so much more intense than she had ever felt at the hands of anyone else. She felt the charge begin to rise, saw the look in Grace’s eyes that let her know that she sensed it, too. Karen bit down on her lip until the charge became too much, crying out before her body fell limp against Grace’s. With the last bit of strength she had, she pressed a kiss to the redhead’s collarbone and sighed. “Oh, honey…” she whispered, wanting to say so much, unable to say anything more than this.

It didn’t seem to matter, though. Grace sounded like she was filled to the brim with understanding, like she could tell exactly what was going on in Karen’s mind. “I know,” she whispered back, pulling the dark haired woman into her until there was no space left between them. “Me too.”

Karen never had this before. She never had someone who knew her this well, who wanted to know her this well. She never had someone who wanted to give her everything she thought she deserved, who made sure she knew she deserved them. It stunned her that that someone was the quirky redhead wrapping herself around her now. But here she was. And Karen couldn’t think of anything better than this.

She stayed there, wrapped in Grace’s arms, never wanting to leave this spot, never wanting to leave this moment, letting her girl’s heartbeat eventually lull her to sleep.

When she woke up the next morning, she reached over to Grace’s side of the bed and realized the redhead wasn’t next to her. She tried to wake herself up enough to fully take in her surroundings, the clothes strewn along the floor, the sunlight spilling in from one side of the room while the light from the hallway spilled in through the open door of the other. Her heart started to sink while her mind started to jump to conclusions. Maybe Grace couldn’t face what they did in the daylight. Maybe she was trying to make it easy for Karen to leave without a trace. Maybe Karen should be bracing herself for the conversation where they both agree it never happened, just go on with their lives and never speak of it ever again. Maybe Grace was getting a head start on the “Never speak of it again” part by giving her a silent way out. Maybe…

Karen took a breath and realized a fresh pot of coffee started to overtake the air. Grace wasn’t hiding. Grace was in the kitchen. There might be hope after all.

She climbed out of bed and picked her clothes off the floor, taking her time getting dressed. She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for the conversation that would inevitably happen as soon as Grace realized she was awake, for whatever that conversation would hold. Because she couldn’t shake the feeling that Grace was starting to dive too far into her own head, thinking, overthinking, trying to put a label on it when Karen wasn’t even sure what the label would even read. Because Karen wasn’t someone Grace could sleep with once and never see again, letting her slip further and further into the recesses of her mind until the idea of their time together was there, but she could no longer remember who or what or when. Karen worked with her. Karen was in her circle. Karen was always there, would always be there, the constant reminder.

In that moment, Karen couldn’t tell if that was a blessing or a curse.

She took a fortifying breath and slowly made her way to the kitchen, trying not to make too much of a sound, wanting to wait until she was ready to call out Grace’s name (although, would she ever be ready?). She saw the redhead seated at the dining table in an oversized t-shirt with her back turned towards her, perfectly still, perfectly silent. As she got closer to the table, once she was able to get a good look at her, Karen could see that Grace was absently running her finger along the rim of the coffee mug in front of her, staring into space, impossible to read. And she waited until the need to move overwhelmed the desire to stay still.

“Grace?”

The redhead startled before she focused on the dark haired woman standing next to her. “Hi,” she breathed, fixing her stare on Karen. She seemed a little rattled, and Karen wished she knew if it was because she surprised Grace, or because Grace couldn’t stop thinking. “There’s coffee over there, if you want some.”

“Oh.” Karen looked over to the coffee pot on the counter like she hadn’t smelled the way it lingered in the air all along. When she turned her gaze back to the redhead, Karen saw that she was focused on her mug, like she wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes locked if she tried. And that unsettled feeling that she woke up with started fighting its way to the surface again. “Is everything okay?” she asked, surprised by how small her voice sounded.

Grace barely gave a nod. “Mm-hmm.”

Well. There it was. Not even able to put a word to the feeling. Not being able to speak about last night. Trying to be polite. Karen could feel the tears start to lodge in her throat and swallowed to keep them down; she was not about to show that side of her now. But she always knew it was a possibility, Grace having second thoughts about it all after it already happened. She always knew it was a possibility, feeling the piercing pain that came with it. She just couldn’t have prepared herself for it, because she never truly thought Grace would be one of the ones who could hurt her.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come over,” she murmured.

Grace shifted what looked like a hurt gaze back to Karen, slid her hand around the dark haired woman’s wrist and tugged her down to the empty chair next to her. “No, I’m glad you did,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t want this. Because I did. I really did. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if you didn’t pick up the phone last night.”

“Then, honey, what’s wrong?”

Karen watched as Grace took what felt like an excruciatingly long breath. She should know by now that there was always another shoe to be dropped. Always. “Look...I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been thinking about this for a long time. Definitely since the Palace. Maybe before that.” If Grace heard the way Karen’s breath hitched at the sound of her confession, she didn’t let it show. “There were a couple times when you seriously had me considering leaving him. I mean, I loved him, but...you were the one I could actually count on. It’s just...the timing was always just a little bit off, wasn’t it?”

“Well...timing always  _ has _ been a bitch,” Karen tried to joke, knowing she wasn’t able to completely hide the way Grace was shaking her right now. She gave a smile as she heard Grace’s small laugh--whether or not it was out of politeness, she couldn’t be sure--and waited while the walls of silence started to close in around them.

Good lord, she just wished Grace would get it over with, rip the rug out from under her and be done with it. It couldn’t possibly feel as bad as the anticipation felt now.

“You’re incredible, Karen,” Grace finally said, and Karen wondered if she realized she said the same thing years back when they played house at the Palace. She wondered if that was Grace’s point. “You know how to make  _ me _ feel incredible. I don’t want to screw this up. I…” She paused for a moment, as if the words were caught in her throat. Karen wasn’t sure if she wanted Grace to shake them loose. “I don’t want us to be each other’s rebound,” the redhead whispered. “We deserve more than to be each other’s rebound.”

It wasn’t quite what Karen was expecting; it wasn’t “This was a mistake” and it wasn’t “Let’s pretend it never happened.” Grace wanted this, wanted to get this right. And if it weren’t for what everything she said after that meant for their future, Karen would have been thrilled. “Honey, that didn’t feel like a rebound,” she murmured.

“No. It didn’t.” Was that a smile trying to break free on Grace’s face, or was Karen imagining it? “But how do we know for sure? Karen, we’re barely out of our divorces. How do we know we’re not rushing into this for the wrong reasons? I just...I want to be sure he’s out of my system before we really do this.” She threw her head into her hands and sighed. “God, it was so selfish of me to ask you over here last night. I’m terrible.”

“Gracie, come on. Don’t do this to yourself.” Karen pulled Grace’s hands away from her face and held on tightly. “I would have gone crazy if you didn’t call. I don’t regret what happened for a second.” She waited until the redhead finally met her gaze. And when she finally saw Grace’s eyes, they were filled with an uncertain sadness she desperately wanted to rid her girl of. She could tell that Grace really was worried about this. She had the feeling that nothing she could say would get Grace to stop worrying. And she knew Grace had a point. Something kept holding the redhead back all those times she said she thought about ending things with Leo. Affection, love, promises she tried to keep with every fiber of her being. Whatever it was, it bound Grace to him in a way she would never fully understand. And she knew that whatever was in store for the two of them--whether it be a few weeks of fun, or a lifetime of everything they had been looking for--couldn’t truly soar until Grace was certain she had broken through the rusted chains of her marriage.

She knew what she had to do.

“You know, you’re the only person who ever acknowledges my divorce, even though you were the only one who wasn’t there.” She smiled even though the thought wasn’t worth it. “It’s like everybody decided I was fine because Finney and I didn’t make it past the reception. And maybe I am fine, for the most part. But at least you don’t act like it never happened.”

“I care about you,” Grace shrugged, like that was enough of an explanation (if Karen was being honest, it was). And Karen knew it was different than the way Jack cared about her, the way Will cared about her, the way anyone she had come across in her life cared about her.

“I don’t think you can rebound from something that was so close to nothing in the first place,” the dark haired woman said. It seemed harsh, talking about her time with Lyle like that. But when she really thought about it, she knew she was using him for his company, using him to take her mind off of Grace, using him to salvage her sanity. She wasn’t proud of it. But she knew it was true. “Honestly, I think I was ready to move on even before the ceremony. But I know how much Leo meant to you. I know how much you put into that marriage. And I know it’s not easy to come back from that. So if you need time to make sure you’re ready for something with me...honey, I don’t want to be the one that pushes you into anything. I don’t want you to end up resenting me because we went too fast.”

“Please...like I could ever resent you, after everything you’ve done. After everything you’ve been to me.” Karen watched Grace try to put on a smile and felt her tighten her hold. “Just a little time,” Grace murmured. “Just to be sure.”

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere, Gracie. I’ll be here.”

The look in the redhead’s eyes was so earnest, it made Karen want to cry. “I know you will be,” Grace whispered. “You always are.” Gently, she pulled Karen in, brushing her lips against the dark haired woman’s so softly, Karen could pretend she imagined it, if she ever needed to forget this particular blip in their friendship. Not that she would want to. But a lot can happen while you’re waiting for your world to change. She just hoped that whatever happened wasn’t enough to steal her girl away. Karen let herself linger against Grace’s lips longer than she ever had before, put off leaving the apartment until the last possible second, knowing she would need this touch and this view committed to her memory for who knew how long.

When she closed the door behind her, she pushed the call button for the elevator and hoped that this wasn’t the last time Grace would ever kiss her like she meant it.

* * *

 

_ 2005 _

In the end, Grace was right.

If it had been up to Karen, they would have jumped right in. Maybe they would have sneaked around for a little while, just to make sure their connection was stable enough to tell people about it (and why wouldn’t it be stable?). Maybe they would have stayed up late at night, crafting the perfect way to tell Will and Jack exactly what they meant to each other. Maybe it would have been awkward for them at first, but at least it would have been out there. And at least they would have been in it together. But Grace needed more time, and Karen wasn’t about to be the one who pushed her into anything when she wasn’t ready. So the dark haired woman waited until it was her turn, until she saw that blinding smile that let her know that Grace wanted her as much as she wanted Grace.

She kept telling herself that it was going to be worth it, as if she had any say in how Grace was going to feel a few months down the road. She had to believe that the waiting would be worth it.

But god, waiting wasn’t easy. Karen watched from the sidelines as Will fixed her girl up with a guy who was, for all intents and purposes, perfect for her. She made a point to sit in the hallway at the lone table of Jack’s little makeshift cafe when date night came around so she could see Grace off, knowing what she’d be doing to herself by becoming a witness to it all, being unable to stop herself from doing it anyway. She saw the wide-eyed look of surprise on Grace’s face as she walked out of 9C and found the dark haired woman there, rushing to the elevator before Jack could register that something in the air was off. Karen made her way over to the redhead while she waited for the elevator, playing with Grace’s dress to make Jack think she was making a few last-minute adjustments while she tried to whisper something--anything--to make this okay.

“You look beautiful tonight, Gracie,” was what she managed.

She met Grace’s gaze and knew exactly what that look meant, the one that told her that the redhead was trying to hold back her tears. “I didn’t know how to get out of this without telling Will everything,” she whispered back.

Karen was never one to show her emotions openly, even to those she trusted. But hearing Grace try to make things okay between them before those elevator doors opened made her thankful that they couldn’t afford to put a true voice to anything, knowing that the lump in her throat would have given her away so quickly. “You don’t have to explain yourself. It’s okay,” she told her, fully aware that she was lying.

“But what if I like him?”

She knew that Grace didn’t mean for the question to cut through her the way it did. But the way it pierced her made it nearly impossible to continue. “Then you like him,” she shrugged as the elevator doors opened, hoping it looked like she was being strong about this, knowing it probably didn’t. “Don’t fight it.”

It wasn’t even remotely close to what she wanted to say. But who was she to derail Grace’s progress just because she couldn’t handle it? She watched as Grace stepped inside, turning to face her with a look of such uncertainty--a look that matched everything Karen had been feeling--it made her want to jump into the elevator with her and whisk her away; it wouldn’t have mattered where. But she stayed rooted in the hallway, her heart plummeting right along with the elevator, unable to stop thinking about how Will was so sure this was a good match. Of course he’d think it was a good match. He knew the part of Grace that she willingly showed him pretty well. And maybe it  _ was _ a good match for that part of the redhead. But she was convinced that she knew her girl better than he did. She was the one who held Grace’s hand through the darkness, who knew every little thing about what Grace loved and hated about every relationship she had in the last seven years. She was the one who knew how to give Grace what she deserved.

But she couldn’t even do that.

If it hadn’t been for Leo’s message later that night, some barely understandable mess about the tradition they meant to establish on their wedding anniversary, Grace could have easily kept seeing Will’s setup. She could have easily decided she was far enough from her rebound period to make something last, and it wouldn’t have been with Karen. But Leo called. And Grace listened, couldn’t stop listening, let it destroy any desire to see this new guy again. And like every other time before it, Karen was there to help unpack everything after the fact, once Will had done his part in trying to take Grace’s mind off of it and she could finally grab on to Karen’s hand through the darkness again.

Karen tried to treat it like every other time. But she’d be lying if she said she didn’t find it harder to let go of Grace’s hand this time. She wondered if her mind would ever stop spinning around the extraordinary timing of Leo’s terrible decisions. She wondered if it should have been guilt overwhelming her instead of relief when she realized how close she came to Bachelor Number One’s fate, being dismissed the second Grace’s unreliable ex-husband left a garbled message for her to obsess over. She wondered how long it would be before this cycle started again.

And then Nick came along.

Maybe if Karen had pushed a little more for Grace to come with her to Shelter Island for that inane Valentine’s dance--after all, Will and Jack were going, it wasn’t as if it was going to be a date--this guy would have flown under the radar entirely. But he seemed harmless enough, and if she was going to lose her chance to someone, losing it to a soft spoken greeting card writer who seemed to treat Grace well was, out of all of the terrible possibilities out there, not the worst thing in the world. As long as the redhead was happy, she could always put on a good front; all that time she spent with her ex-husbands taught her well. But the next thing she knew, Grace was at her front door, waiting to be let in, waiting to tell her how Nick’s passion project of a screenplay was actually getting made, how Jack was the one who convinced Out TV to make it, how Nick had to be there when they filmed it in Vancouver. How they were going to try the long distance thing for a little while. Karen bit her tongue when she felt the criticism forming in her throat-- _ Honey, come on, that’s a terrible idea. Long distance never works-- _ not because she didn’t want to give Grace the truth, but because the truth already seemed to have made its way to the redhead; she could see the way the light in Grace’s eyes dimmed, like she already knew how this was going to go.

It wasn’t long before Nick faded into the memory of boyfriends past, before Grace stopped using corporate time to call Vancouver, before she stopped mentioning him altogether, at least in Karen’s presence. Grace never seemed that heartbroken over it; in fact, it seemed like she had simply accepted the inevitable, like she knew this was their fate all along and decided not to be surprised by it. Which meant that there was room in the redhead’s heart for someone new to live. Karen kept waiting for the day Grace would walk over to her desk and ask her the question she had been dreading since Nick left for Canada, the question that would let her know that the redhead had moved on to someone else, the question that would force her to plaster on a smile and listen to things she didn’t necessarily want to hear.  _ Can I talk to you about something? _

But the day never came.

Instead, Grace’s glances lingered a little longer. Her touch got a little bolder. She started reaching for Karen’s hand whenever she got close to her, like it was second nature, like she didn’t care who could see. She brushed up against her whenever Will and Jack had their backs turned, and then she started brushing up against her when she was directly in their sight line. Every day, Karen tried to find the joke in Grace’s eyes, something to let her know that this was just a game, just the way Grace coped with the hand she had been dealt. And every day, she came up empty handed. She felt her heart quicken at the thought of finally-- _ finally _ \--being able to take that next step, of Grace finally taking her hand and leading the way. But she never wanted to force the redhead into anything. Grace was the one who wanted to wait; Grace should be the one to tell her that she’s ready.

It wasn’t until the night they were finally alone in 9C, three months after Nick left the country, that Karen felt the air in the room get a little thicker with anticipation, that she knew Grace was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what (or, if she was being honest, she had a hunch at what Grace was trying to tell her; she just didn’t want to get her hopes up). Grace handed her a glass of Cabernet, her touch charged as their fingers brushed against each other for a fleeting moment. She sat down next to Karen on the living room couch as she sipped from her own glass, and the dark haired woman could feel her gaze against her skin. Karen wasn’t confident in her ability to look Grace in the eye without breaking, so she trained her sights on her glass, running her finger around the rim in the silence, nearly getting lost in the motion, until...

“Why don’t you ever take things further?”

Karen snapped back into reality, studying the redhead sitting on the couch next to her. Grace’s eyes were gentle but expectant, her voice was soft but sounded like it was tinged with (could it really be?) disappointment. The dark haired woman took a breath, set her glass down on the coffee table, and willed herself to keep her eyes trained on Grace no matter what. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me to, honey.” She surprised herself with how quiet she sounded. “You were the one who wanted to wait. Besides...it’s not like we never touched each other like that before we…” She trailed off, the memory of their one night together racing to the front of her mind so fast, she swore she could feel the way Grace had wrapped around her like she couldn’t bear to let Karen leave her. She swore she could feel the warmth radiating from the thought, until she realized it wasn’t the thought at all. It was Grace, moving closer, slowly leaning in.

“I never meant to make us wait this long,” the redhead murmured. “I never  _ wanted _ to wait this long.” She shook her head. “I thought maybe you had lost interest. I thought maybe you didn’t want me anymore, and if we just never talked about that night, we could pretend it never happened, go back to the way we used to be.” She brushed a lock of Karen’s hair behind her ear, and Karen felt it throughout her entire body. “But the thing is, I don’t want to go back to the way we used to be. I want to be able to do this,” she pulled Karen in, brushing her lips against the dark haired woman’s softly before pulling away, “and have it mean something.”

_ It has always meant something. It will always mean something.  _ You  _ will always mean something. _ She felt the words rushing to her lips, stumbling over each other to reach the air, but Karen couldn’t put a voice to them, no matter how hard she tried. So she pulled Grace into her kiss, hoping the redhead could taste the sentiment on her tongue. And when she felt Grace’s touch slide around her waist, pulling her down on the couch, it was like Grace knew everything she meant to say in the silence. Grace slid her hands up Karen’s spine, leaving the most brilliantly charged sparks in their wake; her kiss grew more and more urgent, and it overwhelmed Karen to realize just how much she missed this, how much she missed Grace pulling her in with all the strength she had, acting like she desperately needed that touch.

Karen desperately needed that touch, too. But she knew she couldn’t fully give herself to it unless she asked.

“Honey, are you sure?” she whispered as she pulled away to catch her breath, still stunned that she was hovering over Grace in a way she was beginning to think would never happen again. She was confident she knew the answer; she just wanted to hear it for herself. She wanted it to fill the air around them. She wanted Grace to glow with it.

She watched the smile on her girl’s face grow. “Karen,” Grace murmured back, “you have no idea how much I need you.”

_ Thank god,  _ Karen thought to herself. It wasn’t until Grace laughed before pulling her back in again that she realized she said it out loud.

Karen let her kiss travel from Grace’s lips, down her neck, lingering for a moment to take in the way the redhead’s perfume made her head swim in the most euphoric way. Her fingers raced through the buttons of Grace’s blouse before she plunged her lips against her newly exposed skin, smiling against Grace’s breast the second she heard the redhead sigh. She felt it in her core when Grace took her hands and led them to the button of her jeans and whispered “Please” like it was the only word she knew, and it made her melt. She couldn’t believe it took them so long to get here again, when it could feel like this before they had even really done anything. She couldn’t believe she went all of those months without the sparks and the sighs and the way Grace held onto her like she couldn’t bear the thought of Karen ever being out of reach.

But good lord, was it worth the wait.

They were so fixated on each other, everything else faded to nothing. Which meant they didn’t hear the key turning in the lock. They didn’t hear the front door opening. They didn’t hear the footsteps coming closer towards them or the gasp of surprise as those footsteps suddenly stopped. They didn’t hear any of it coming.

But something inside them must have known to stay alert. Because they  _ did _ hear a voice that wasn’t theirs call out for attention.

“Karen?”

The dark haired woman jerked herself back from Grace and whipped her head to the front door to find Will, wide-eyed and distraught. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Grace rushing to button her blouse back up and straighten out her already mussed up hair. “Oh my god,” she heard the redhead mutter, her soft voice cracking. “What do we do?”

Karen reached for Grace’s hand without taking her eyes off of Will, let her thumb trace its usual circles, even though she wasn’t sure how much good it would do. She wondered if her lipstick had smeared, if her skin looked flushed; she knew they probably were, that if she hadn’t just been on top of Grace, those things would have been the giveaway. Which meant that she had nothing to lose. “We tell him the truth,” she murmured back. “It’ll be okay.”

She hoped that because she said it, it would be true.

Will looked shaken, and he sounded like he was on edge. “We need to talk,” he said. And Karen could tell she was in for a fight.

She expected a number of things to fly from Will’s mouth in that moment. She expected him to ask her what the hell she was doing with his best friend. She expected him to ask Grace if she had gone insane. She expected him to put all the blame on her, because of course he didn’t know about the night Grace told her to come over all those months ago, about the things they did in her bed while he was with Vince. She expected him to demand that she explain herself, and she expected to do so with such conviction, it would knock him to the ground. But his stare seemed to look right past them, past their bodies and their lips pressed against each other, like he didn’t even notice what he had just walked in on. And even though she braced herself for all of the things that would come along with one of his tirades, she could never have braced herself for what she actually got, for the way everything went dark around her, for the way it sounded like such an absurd lie. For the way she waited for him to tell her he was joking. For the way he never did.

Nothing could have prepared her for the moment Will told her that Stanley Walker was still alive.


	5. Interlude

_ 2015 _

“Can I talk to you about something?”

It had been so long since she last heard the question, she was convinced she was imagining it at first. Grace hadn’t moved from her spot across the office, and by the time she looked up to follow the voice, she found Grace’s gaze focused on her sketch like nothing happened. And she would have been content to ignore it, go back to her magazine and wait out the silence until it was closing time. But then she saw the redhead slowly look up from her workspace, with a cautiously expectant look in her eyes. And she realized the cycle they had abandoned so many years ago was about to start up again, throwing her into a spiral, making her spin, hell bent on driving her insane. If she was being honest, she never thought Grace would be bold enough to ask her again. Not after everything that happened between them a decade ago. But Grace always knew how to take her by surprise.

Karen loved and hated that about her.

Ten years. In that time, they could have embarked on a completely different life. One that could have started with telling Will the truth the night he walked in on them in the living room. One that would have lifted the weight of years of heartache and bad matches and what ifs off of her chest. One that would have finally let her get it right. Throughout the years, Karen thought about where she and Grace would have ended up. Maybe it wouldn’t have lasted; it was always a possibility, no matter how certain you were about the long haul. But she liked to think that they would have made it work. She liked to think that eventually, she would have moved out of the manse--too much of Stan was there, anyway--and Grace would have moved out of 9C. She liked to think that eventually, they would have found a place to call their own, somewhere far more permanent than the Palace but with all of the heart they felt within those hotel walls. Maybe there would have been a ring and a honeymoon; maybe they would have decided that they were done with marriage, that they didn’t need a piece of paper to tell the world what they meant to each other. But there would have been so many nights together, nights like the one she spent in Grace’s bed way back when. And this time, they could have promised each other a future and actually meant it. They could have proven to themselves that sometimes, promises could be kept.

But then Will told her about Stan, about how he was in trouble with the law (what else was new?) and had to go into hiding for a little while, how he tried to get Will to help him, how Will wouldn’t do anything until Karen knew the truth. It just didn’t seem real; there was a funeral, there were mourners. She said goodbye. She closed that chapter of her life. She didn’t want to open it again, not when her next chapter looked so beautiful, so promising, so full of the sheer grace of Grace. She didn’t want anything to do with a man who would so willingly abandon her in more ways than one, and she gladly told Will so. That should have been the end of it. That should have been the point where she took Grace’s hand and ran towards their happily ever after. But the look in Grace’s eyes made her stop. The look in Grace’s eyes let her know that they weren’t done jumping over hurdles. The look in Grace’s eyes made her heart sink to the floor.

Over the years, she had gotten pretty good at blurring the bad memories with a strong martini and even stronger resolve. But there wasn’t a drink strong enough to make her forget the sad conviction in her girl’s voice when they finally sat down to talk, the way her touch was so soft, Karen had to really concentrate to feel it. She could never forget the way each word that left their lips cut her deeper and deeper as they started to form a future Karen never asked for, a future that would be forced on her, a future she could not escape. But good lord, did she try. “Honey, you have to know I don’t care about him,” she said back then, before Grace could speak. “This doesn’t change a thing.”

“Of course it does, Karen. Your husband’s alive. You’re…” Grace had paused for a moment, piecing everything together, her eyes getting wider as she realized exactly what Stanley’s return meant. “Oh my god, you’re still married,” she had whispered. “You’re still married. You never finalized the divorce before he…” She hadn’t been able to finish the thought. Karen hadn’t wanted her to.

“So I finalize the divorce. That was always the plan anyway. Gracie...we finally made it. It can finally be you and me.” She had taken Grace’s hands in hers, making sure their eyes met so the redhead knew she meant every word. “We can do this.”

The way Grace had looked at her then was devastating; she had felt like she was watching their chance fall into the void. “How are you so calm about this?” the redhead had asked. “How are you not questioning everything right now?”

“You don’t think I have questions? Of course I have questions. But what good is it going to do to have answers to questions I don’t even think I want to ask?”

“Okay, so you don’t want to ask them now. But what if somewhere down the line, you want to? What if you realize you want to work through these things with him? What if…” Grace’s breath had hitched in that moment, as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say, as if the words were balled up in her throat and she was trying to move around them, “what if I get in the way?”

“Grace, there’s nothing for you to get in the way of,” Karen had murmured, slowly realizing that it wouldn’t matter how many times she said it, or how many different ways, or in how many different inflections; there would be no way to get the redhead to fully believe her. She had known exactly what Grace was going to say.

“Can you really promise me that? Who’s to say that one day down the line, you won’t be curious? That you won’t want some kind of closure?” When Grace asked, she hadn’t sounded bitter, and she hadn’t sounded accusatory. She had sounded like a woman who was asking from experience, a woman who had just gone through this and made it to the other side, only to find that the one waiting for her was about to go down the same road. And Karen hadn’t been able to find the voice to tell her that she was looking for a different route.

“So what do you want to do?” The dark haired woman had been at a loss. She had hoped that Grace wasn’t at one, too.

“I want…” The redhead’s voice had started to crack, started to betray the confident, sure tone she had so clearly been trying to set. “I want to give you the space to tie up your loose ends with Stan. Whatever that entails. However long that takes.” Grace had sighed, had barely been able to keep her eyes locked on Karen’s while their walls had been closing in around them. “I know you keep saying you don’t feel anything for him anymore. But you were with him for  _ such _ a long time, Karen. It can’t be that easy to let go. I  _ hope _ it wouldn’t be that easy to let go. Even if it means I have to wait for you a little longer.”

And what exactly could Karen have said to that?

When she looked back on that time now, Karen realized that Grace was simply giving her the time that Karen gave Grace months before, time to make sure Stanley was out of her system (even though he was out of her system the second she walked in on him with Lorraine), time to know what she truly wanted (she had known what she wanted, and she had finally put together the fact that she had wanted it for years), time to clear the path that led to a future for the two of them (why didn’t Grace understand that she would walk the most obstructed path in the world if it led to their future?). She realized that she could have given it a few weeks, a couple months at most, before she gave Grace the answer she already had between her lips, and it would have been fine. But in that moment, she had felt like she just lost everything. She had felt like she just needed to run into the arms of someone she didn’t have to explain herself to. But Grace was off limits. And if she couldn’t run to Grace, it didn’t matter who she ran to, as long as she ran to someone.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea in the world to get involved with the man who helped Stan go into hiding (listen to her, saying “Maybe” like there was any chance of an upside to this). But Malcolm liked her. Malcolm wanted to spend time with her. And if he realized her heart wasn’t really in it, he didn’t seem to mind. But she could tell Grace did, even if Grace never said a word. It was a stupid fling, Karen knew this, but it seemed to draw a line in the sand as far as the redhead was concerned. Karen regretted it more than she ever thought she had the capacity to regret something. And by the time she and Malcolm ended things, she noticed the way Grace’s eye started to wander when they went out. Not when it was just the two of them; at least the redhead seemed to realize how painful it was to see her weigh her options when Will or Jack wasn’t there to make light of it. But when they were with the guys, in bars, in coffee shops, in restaurants, Grace got a little bolder, played off of Will’s longing or Jack’s judgment, acted like it was no big deal. And if Grace could act like it was no big deal, so could Karen.

Karen could act her heart out. Karen could put on a front that everyone would believe. Even Grace, when they were alone in the office. Even Stan, when she finally decided to get it over with and pick up the phone.

She didn’t want to be alone. Stan didn’t want to be alone. They knew how to live together; even if it wasn’t ideal, they knew how to do it. So she went back to what she knew, and she stayed there for the last ten years. But it didn’t keep her from wishing she could feel Grace’s touch during the lonelier nights. It didn’t keep her from wishing Grace was the one in bed next to her. It didn’t keep her from wishing there was a chance that somewhere down the line, they could drop the act, they could touch each other like they once did, they could kiss and have it mean something.

They never talked about that night, the one she spent in Grace’s bed while Will was away. And Karen knew she couldn’t even if she wanted to; she knew the words would get jumbled, lodged in her throat. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get through half of a sentence before she would want to cry the other half out. It was easier to pretend it never happened, easier to pretend like they were never so close to the fire, they could touch the flame. It helped get them back to a stable place of friendship. It wasn’t quite the friendship it once was--they thought about their actions now, thought about their implications, even though neither one of them would admit it--but it was enough. It had to be enough. Even if Karen still felt the heat of the flame.

That fire never quite stopped burning when it came to Grace. And deep down, Karen knew it never would. But it wasn’t as if she could do anything about it now. Not when that fated question had been taken down from the shelf and dusted off. Not when she was about to strap herself into this rollercoaster again.

“I wouldn’t bother you with this,” Grace finally said now, bringing Karen back to reality, crushing her to realize they had gotten to a point where it was actually true, “but...but I ran into Leo a few weeks ago, and we went out for coffee a couple times, and...I don’t know, I’m just starting to think that maybe he’s not the same person he was ten years ago. Maybe it’ll be different this time.”

It took all Karen had to swallow her laugh. Guys like Leo never changed; maybe they stopped playing the more horrible cards in their deck--maybe he actually found a conscience and decided cheating on your wife wasn’t going to win him Husband of the Year--but they would always be the same people who were capable of playing them. You could never trust them. And she couldn’t believe Grace had gotten to a point where she convinced herself that she could. Maybe Karen should step in now, forgo the usual routine of hearing her out as she tried to rationalize the mistake she was about to make, and give her a little bit of that honesty she once loved. There  _ was _ a point in time when Grace thought Karen made the truth feel safe; maybe she still felt that way. After all, why would she be coming to Karen about Leo--of all people--if she wanted sugar coated opinions?

But when she started to take a breath to speak, the weight of what Grace had said fully hit her. A few weeks ago...she ran into him a few weeks ago. Potentially around the same time she suddenly got the urge to redecorate the office. Karen thought it was just the designer in Grace, wanting to give their space an update, wanting to make it look like she was up on the trends when her clients walked in, ready to trust her with their homes. And truth be told, Karen thought a few changes  _ could _ be made to the office. She didn’t pay much mind to the frantic way Grace was throwing things together, because everything ended up looking great. She always made everything look great. The space looked bigger, she gave Karen a little pop of color at her desk, everything fell into place. It happened so fast, and yet it looked like she had taken so much care with every little thing.

It looked like she had taken so much care, so she didn’t think to question why it happened so fast.

She wondered now if it had anything to do with him, if she was taking the whole clean slate idea to the extreme. Before the makeover, everything that lived inside Grace Adler Designs was tinged with a memory. Karen’s desk, the one Grace would always visit, either to ask the question she always asked or to get a little closer to the dark haired woman during a slow time in the office. The rug they had been standing on when Karen dared Grace to kiss her the way Leo did, and Grace put her whole heart into it. The accent chair Grace pulled Karen down from the day they finally decided to start breaking down the walls that kept them from being together. The office had been so full of their history, until it wasn’t. Was that intentional? Did Grace think that if there were no reminders of who they once were, it would be easier to find a groove with Leo, to find a fresh start with a stale prospect? Karen hoped that wasn’t the case. But she wouldn’t put it past Grace.

Maybe the change was for the best. It no longer looked like the place she first walked into in 1998. It no longer looked like the place where--there was nothing left to lose, she could admit this now--she fell in love with the wildfire vision whose name was on the door. But she had to believe it was for the best.

This way, it was easier to pretend like she never fell in the first place.

“I think you might be the only one who knows what I’m going through.” Grace was still going. How was she still going? “I mean, you were able to forgive Stan for everything, right? It couldn’t have been easy, but you did it. And you’ve stayed together for ten years. If you were able to forgive him and move on with him, maybe it’s worth trying again with Leo.”

There was so much Karen wanted to say to her right now. She wanted to tell her that the only reason she stayed with Stan was because the door that led to Grace wouldn’t budge anymore. She wanted to tell her that she never really forgave him, but it was easy to make him think she did. She wanted to tell her that just because she stayed with him, it didn’t mean she loved him, and it didn’t mean she’s happy, but she knew how to navigate him; she’s figured out enough of his quirks and mannerisms to not be surprised by him anymore, and there was something calming in not being surprised by someone. She wanted to tell her that Leo would probably lead her down the same road. She wanted to warn her about the troubles that would surely meet her somewhere down the line.

But maybe this was something Grace needed to figure out on her own. Maybe this was the journey Karen couldn’t prepare her for. Maybe Karen gave up the right to prepare her the day she told Stan she wanted him to come back home and felt that lie in every fiber of her being when she said it. Maybe Grace wouldn’t listen even if she  _ did _ try to prepare her. Maybe Grace just needed someone to tell her that what she wanted was possible. Maybe Grace was pretending to want this, the same way Karen had been pretending for the last decade. Maybe Karen could call her bluff. Maybe if she did, it would push Grace closer to Leo.

Maybes made Karen crazy. It was better if she didn’t think about it.

“Well…” she replied, hating the uncertainty in her voice. She sighed as she braced herself, knowing she would always give in to her girl, no matter what their history was. “Sure, honey. Tell me all about it.” A part of her actually missed this. A part of her actually missed being the one Grace came to, being the one she trusted with the weight of it all. But that part of her was doing battle with the bigger part that wanted to be the one who ended this cycle for good, the one who made Grace confident. The one Grace was so sure about, she wouldn’t remember how to form the question in the first place.

The battle was exhausting. But she wasn’t about to let that show.

She was listening to Grace; she always listened to every word Grace said. But as the redhead pulled a chair up to Karen’s desk and started pouring her heart out like old times, the dark haired woman could hear the the question circling her mind, over and over, never once showing signs of stopping.

_ How did we end up right back where we started? _


	6. Love Me Once, Then Leave Forever

_**“I put on a record,** _   
_**It said, ‘Love me once, then leave forever’** _   
_**We’re so pure, we should learn both joy and rage together** _   
_**You took off the record and said, ‘What’s your rush?** _   
_**As if things won’t break in their own time** _   
_**Without you here to push them** _   
_**Forget about the record** _   
_**Forget about that song** _   
_**Let’s concentrate on what we got right** _   
_**And what we’re still doing wrong’”** _

_ 2016 _

When Grace told everyone about her plans, she seemed to pride herself on the fact that she wasn’t making a big deal about it. After all, they had done the big blowout celebration the first time around; sure it was fun, but did they really need to recreate it? A quick trip to City Hall and a little party afterwards would do just fine. Karen didn’t say a word, just let Will and Jack be the ones to make a congratulatory show of friendship that sounded just as hollow as she expected it to. This was how they operated, now that Leo was back in the picture. They piled on saccharine sentiments that had no heart in them. Grace never once probed further into how her friends truly felt about any of this; whether it was because she didn’t care or she didn’t want to hear the obvious, Karen couldn’t be sure. But she was sure she knew Grace. She knew that Grace couldn’t resist a big party in her honor, all eyes on her, gifts with her name on them. She knew that if Grace really believed in this, if she really believed in marrying Leo a second time, she would do the big blowout celebration all over again. Which told her that this wasn’t the way Grace envisioned her happy ending. And honestly, it wasn’t the way Karen envisioned it, either.

But nobody stopped it.

A couple of weeks after Grace made her big announcement, she and Leo made it official, with Will as their reluctant witness. And Karen was left with Jack, waiting for them in 9C, desperately trying to make sure her Poodle was clueless about the storm raging on inside of her. She could see him fidgeting while she made herself a drink in the kitchen, both of them looking at the door every few seconds waiting for the newlyweds, one of them bracing herself a little more than the other. And then his voice cut through the silence like a knife.

“Ugh, what is taking them so long? Don’t they just sign something and go?”

Karen tried to stifle a laugh inside her martini as she made her way towards him. The whole thing was the worst kind of joke: Jack squirming because he just wanted them to get it over with, Karen squirming because she wished they never would. And she couldn’t even tell him why she was squirming. There was nothing she could do but laugh it off and straighten up the mask. “Beats me, honey,” she said once she took a sip.

Jack shook his head. “Well, I don’t get it. Last time was a  _ fiasco,” _ he said, throwing all of his emphasis in at the end. “Why would she take him back after that?”

The dark haired woman arched her brow and gave Jack a moment to think about who he was talking to. “Poodle, I don’t really think I’m the best person to answer that,” she said, eyes trained on him, waiting for the lightbulb to go off.

When it did, his eyes got a little wider with realization before he brushed off Karen’s objection. “Yeah, but Stan’s loaded, so  _ you _ had a reason. If Leo had Stan’s money, it would make so much sense.” Sure...the money. Let him think she settled back into her life with Stan for the money. It was better than explaining the real reason. “But he doesn’t, and everything about him is just so...boring.”

“And smug,” Karen quipped before she realized what she was doing. No. She wasn’t going to show her cards today, this wasn’t how she wanted to act, it wasn’t…

“And lame,” Jack fired back with a shine in his eyes.

Karen couldn’t help herself; she started grinning at the sudden outlet she had been given, and she knew she had to take advantage of it. “And  _ so _ unfunny, it hurts.”

“Oh my god, and then he laughs at his own jokes like a dad, and it makes everything so awkward!” Jack’s giggle was contagious; Karen felt it through her whole body and heard her own breathless laughter start to ramp up. She had been so somber for so long about Grace’s rekindled romance and impending nuptials, she nearly forgot that other feelings existed. She felt herself fall into Jack as he continued. “How can you even have sex with that?” he asked as he was trying to catch his breath.

Before she could think about it, Karen blurted out, “Close your eyes and pray, honey. Close your eyes and pray.”

They suddenly fell silent, as if maybe they started to cross a line, as if maybe they were actually thinking about what they said. But then she saw the way Jack’s smile was trying to break free from his pursed lips, and she felt herself break out into another round of laughter to match his, holding onto his arm for support until it subsided again.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most supportive avenue she could have taken. But after everything she had been through with Grace over the years, who could blame her for taking a quick break from the moral high road?

As the silence got stronger, Karen could feel it get heavier. She could feel Jack’s eyes on her, studying her, and she wished she could place his intent; she knew it couldn’t possibly be anything good. And the longer he looked at her, the stronger her bad feeling got. She brought her martini to her lips, trying to occupy herself, hoping he would just say what he wanted to say and get it over with, so she knew what game she would have to play to keep her facade intact. And as she let her drink slide down her throat, Jack finally, softly, got to his point.

“Are you okay with all of this?”

No. Of course not. How could anyone possibly be? “Well, sure, honey. Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, throwing her effort to seem fine (or at the very least, indifferent) into overdrive.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s nothing. It’s just that ever since Grace told us she was getting married again, you’ve been a little off. I know you don’t like Leo. But just now? That was the first time in a couple weeks where you seemed like you.”

Karen froze for a moment. She couldn’t believe Jack was able to see through her like that. It made her wonder if anyone else had been able to pick up on it, too. It made her wonder if she should just come clean. This could have been the moment she told him everything. This could have been the moment where she took advantage of their best friend status and confided in him the way she probably should have a long time ago. She could have told him about all the times Grace ran to her during her first marriage, how there was something between them that kept growing, how they almost made it. How they wouldn’t even be waiting for them to come back from City Hall right now if things had gone the slightest bit different, if she had made the right choice after learning about Stan instead of a stupid mistake. But she knew she couldn’t handle it now; she wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to handle that conversation, but it definitely wouldn’t do to get into this minutes before she was supposed to pretend to be happy for Grace. So she tried to shake it off. “Oh, come on, whaddya talk? I’m fine!” she exclaimed a little too brightly. “Grace can marry whoever she wants. It’s not like  _ I’m _ the one that has to live with him for the rest of my life.”

Silence. The relief that maybe she actually put this matter to rest started to wash over her. And then...

“You think she’s making a mistake, don’t you?”

His question nearly knocked her over. She was so sure she had an even tone to her voice. She was so sure that she had possessed that air of indifference she had perfected over the years. How could he possibly see through that? “I think…” she started, trying to give herself a moment to recover, “I think Grace is a big girl who can make her own decisions. And if this is what she wants, then it’s what she wants.” She set her glass down on the dining table and wrapped her arms around herself. Suddenly, she felt terrible for making fun of Leo out of the redhead’s earshot. Suddenly, the weight came crashing down on her shoulders once again. And she knew she had to try to make it right. “We’re her friends, Jackie. We can’t keep talking about him behind her back. We need to be there for her.” It didn’t matter if she wasn’t entirely sure how much she  _ could _ be there for Grace at this point; it sounded pretty final, and she hoped that would be the end of it.

But Jack narrowed his eyes for a second, and she was convinced that he figured it out, that it was written all over her face, that she’d soon be forced to dive back into a history that was too painful to look back on because he wouldn’t rest until his curiosity could. She had known Jack McFarland for eighteen years, and she constantly saw the way people underestimated him, his intelligence, his intuition. There were times when he caught onto things in a way no one else could, and it truly stunned her. She just hoped to god that this wasn’t one of those times; she didn’t want to spend the moments leading up to Grace’s arrival putting her emotions on display when she had to survive this party for however long they planned on keeping up the charade of celebration.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, they heard someone fumbling with the key outside the front door and knew they were about to be joined by Will and the newlyweds. She could see the gears turning in his head, the way he was clearly looking for something else to say besides whatever probe into her heart he was planning. And just before the door opened, he sighed a defeated “I guess you’re right,” before making a total 180 at the sight of Grace and Leo, shouting an overly enthusiastic “Oh my god, congratulations!” their way.

And any relief Karen might have felt over skipping her heart-to-heart with Jack got destroyed by the way the sight of Grace and Leo together pierced through her. She raised her nearly empty martini glass as a silent congratulatory gesture in their direction before she turned away to get another drink. She didn’t want to meet Grace’s gaze right now. There was no telling how soon she would crumble under that gaze.

Karen busied herself in the kitchen putting together a second martini when Will came up to grab a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. She knew she would probably regret it as soon as she did it. But she had to ask. “How did it go?” she mumbled softly before she turned to face him.

She couldn’t tell if the troubled look on his face was from the ceremony he had just witnessed or the way he was wrestling with the champagne cork (she wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit of both). “A root canal would have been a more pleasant experience,” he muttered. “I don’t know how she thinks this is going to work. It wasn’t just the cheating last time, you know. There were all these little things in between that made her miserable. Things she never really talked about.” It was cute, the way he thought she didn’t know. She would have thought that by now, Grace would have clued him in on the time she took refuge with Karen in the Palace, or the times their voices broke through a staticky phone connection when Grace was in Cambodia. She would have thought that by now, Grace would have told him what happened between them before Stan came back into the picture. But he didn’t have a clue. And Karen wasn’t sure how that made her feel.

“I can guarantee you that all of those little things are still going to be there,” Will continued. “But you know Grace. Once she gets an idea in her head, it’s all over.”

Karen couldn’t contain her scoff. She thought about the night they slept together, the beers and the closeness in the office that led up to it. She thought about the morning after, how Grace wanted to wait to start their new chapter. She thought about the conversation they had when Stan came back, how there was no way she could ever convince Grace that she didn’t need time to figure out how she felt about it. And she thought about how crazy it was that Will could guess how their history played out when he didn’t even know what that history was. “That’s Grace, alright,” she said. “Not much you can do about it, is there?”

Will finally popped the bottle and gestured towards Karen with it. “I can drink enough to make it tolerable,” he declared as he readied a few champagne flutes.

The dark haired woman couldn’t contain her smirk. It didn’t matter how clueless Will was about her past with Grace; in that moment, it helped so much to know that in some sense, they were in the same boat. “Well, then, honey, you’re going to need something a little stronger.” She slid her freshly made martini across the counter to him before grabbing another glass and getting back to work on one for herself. She saw the look of surprise on Will’s face over her sudden bout of generosity and felt her smirk get a little bigger. “Go ahead, take it.”

Reluctantly, Will picked up the glass, waiting for Karen to fix her drink before he moved in for a silent toast. “Thanks, Karen,” he murmured. He looked like he was bracing himself for a moment before he started grabbing the champagne flutes to pass to the others. “Guess we should go over there and grin and bear it, huh?”

Karen picked up a flute and sighed. “Let’s get this over with, Wilma.”

For what it was worth, Karen thought her mask held up pretty well through this sad excuse for a party. She smiled when she should have smiled, made it look like she was listening to whatever it was Leo or Grace or Jack or Will was saying even though her own thoughts wouldn’t quiet down long enough for her to pay attention to anything else. She pulled responses out of thin air when she needed to, and somehow they made sense. But everybody has a breaking point. And when she finally reached hers, Karen slipped out to the terrace when no one was looking, bracing against the brisk Manhattan air and settling into her first true moment alone all day.

And as much as she wanted this time to herself, she was disappointed to discover how much she truly hated it.

As she looked down over the city, she couldn’t help wondering if it was always going to be this strange now, being anywhere near Grace. She could barely make eye contact with the redhead the entire time she’d been here, and every time she felt Grace’s eyes on her, she felt it burn. If they couldn’t even make it through a party, with other people and other distractions, how are they possibly going to be able to work together? How long would she be able to last, sitting across from the redhead day in and day out, in silence, trying to pretend like everything was fine? When would this get better?

_ Would _ it ever get better?

Karen felt the tears at her throat and was surprised she was able to hold out this long before needing a moment with her feelings. But as soon as she decided the coast was clear to let it out, she heard the door to the terrace opening behind her, and she swallowed everything down before whoever was invading her private moment could catch on.

“There you are.”

The dark haired woman took a fortifying breath at the greeting and turned to face Grace. The redhead looked so uncertain, it was difficult for Karen not to act on instinct, not to reassure her that everything was going to be okay. She just couldn’t do it this time. She didn’t have the heart to tell Grace something she didn’t believe in. “I was looking for you,” Grace continued, slowly taking a step towards Karen. “I thought maybe you had left without saying goodbye.”

Karen shrugged, not knowing what else to do. “Nope. You found me.”

Grace tried to give a smile, but it made her look sadder somehow. Sadder. That’s how Karen saw it. Which meant that Grace already had to be sad. But Karen couldn’t tell if that was real, or if it was just what she was telling herself to survive this. “I’m really glad you’re here,” the redhead murmured. Her voice sounded like it was obligated, like she had to say something to that effect to make this feel as normal as possible, even though nothing about this was normal.

“Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?” Said like it was obligated, like she had to make this feel as normal as possible.

Over the years, Karen had gotten used to the fact that she lost her chance. She had gotten used to Grace dating again, gotten used to watching them stick around for a few weeks, maybe a few months, before they walked right back out again. It stung less and less as time went on. And when it started to sting less and less, it started to be easier and easier to get back to the way they were before Leo came along. There was still a friendship, and Karen still held it close to her heart. But the second he wormed his way back into the picture, he seemingly destroyed any possibility of getting by the way they had been over the last ten years. He brought up too many memories. He brought up too many emotions. And the worst part of it was that he had no idea he was doing it. Which made Karen hate him even more.

And now, here they were, struggling to make conversation after eighteen years of friendship. 

“I didn’t really think this would happen again,” Grace finally said, softly.

Karen felt too exhausted to try to come up with anything other than “Me either.”

She saw the way Grace moved from side to side, saw the way she kept looking at her feet, the way she started wringing her hands. And she probably should have known what was coming next; after all, it happened the last time. But it still felt like the wind was being knocked out of her when she heard Grace’s voice wrap around the words.

“Do you think I did the right thing?”

Karen remembered the last time Grace asked her that. Sitting at the bar, head on Karen’s shoulder, back turned towards the celebration of her new marriage. She remembered how she didn’t want to shatter Grace’s idea of marriage by projecting her own opinions on it, how she didn’t want to send the redhead into a tailspin on her wedding night because of her read on her new husband. She still didn’t have the heart to send Grace into a tailspin. But she wasn’t about to pretend like everything was okay, either.

Nothing about this was okay.

Karen took a breath and moved a little closer to the redhead. She gave herself a moment to be sure her voice was steady, to be sure she made it clear that she wasn’t trying to be vindictive, she was merely trying to save herself the embarrassment of feeling something for a dream Grace had clearly forgotten about. She mustered the strength to look Grace in the eye. Her voice was barely there, but it was there.

“You don’t want me to answer that, Grace.”

The redhead looked hurt, stung by the fact that Karen refused to use a nickname to soften the blow, stung by the fact that Karen refused to play along. And even though she knew she could have done a lot more damage, Karen couldn’t stand seeing Grace like this. She moved past the redhead, quickly heading back into the apartment before just as quickly grabbing her coat and purse and walking out the door. She didn’t want to risk someone catching her while she waited for the elevator, so she hurried down nine floors worth of stairs until she finally reached the street. As she caught her breath, she realized she was at a loss. She didn’t want to stay here a second longer than she had to, but she in no way wanted to go home; she couldn’t think of anything worse than following that disaster of a party up with quality time with Stan (or, if she was being honest, a lack thereof; she couldn’t stand the thought of being alone right now).

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it was a bad idea. She knew that nothing good would come out of it, and she knew that she was only going to make things worse. But she fished her phone out of her purse anyway. Because in that moment, she didn’t care about what was going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. She just wanted a distraction. And this was the best one she could think of.

She scrolled through her contacts until she landed on the number she wanted and put the phone to her ear, fidgeting impatiently until the ringing finally stopped.

“Honey? It’s me. Listen, I know we just saw each other, and I normally wouldn’t ask. But something came up, and I...I just want to be with someone tonight. Tell me where you are.” She listened to the voice on the other end, letting out a sigh of relief when she realized he was still in Manhattan, still in the place she last left him. She hung up the phone, rushed to the limo, and called out directions to Driver through the partition.

The next thing she knew, she was standing outside Malcolm’s hotel room, knocking on the door.

**********

She only meant for it to be a once a year thing, if that. Just to tide her over. Just to remind herself that she was still desirable in someone’s eyes. Just when he was in town (which wasn’t often). Just until she figured out how to get out of the mess she dragged herself into when she took Stanley back. She never felt good about it before they met up; she felt worse about it after she left the hotel. But in the moment, it filled something in her that nothing else really did. So she kept coming back.

It wasn’t as though Karen had been actively seeking him out; it wasn’t as though she tracked him down after their breakup. She had honestly forgotten about him after a while. But a few years after Stan had moved back into the manse, she ran into Malcolm in a bar, and he asked her if he could buy her a drink for old time’s sake. She didn’t see the harm in it. By her third martini, he asked her if she ever thought about him, their brief fling. She lied and said she had. By her fourth, he asked her if she wanted to go back to his hotel room. She told the truth and said she did.

It wasn’t going to last longer than one night. Until it did.

Every now and then, she’d get a call to let her know that he was back in town and she’d go to him, sometimes for a night, sometimes for a weekend; it wasn’t like Stan ever asked her where she was going, and the manse was big enough that not seeing each other for a couple of days wasn’t too out of the ordinary. Those calls were few and far between, with Malcolm usually god knows where doing god knows what for the CIA, but they were enough. Until Grace got married again. And suddenly, that something in her that needed to be filled depleted faster and faster with each passing week. So she started breaking their rules, started calling him when she got a little too lonely for her liking.

She wasn’t quite sure how he always seemed to be there when she needed him. But she never questioned it.

Five months after Grace’s City Hall wedding, Karen woke up in Malcolm’s hotel room to find him still sleeping peacefully beside her, and she knew she could make a clean getaway if she hurried. Slowly, she eased herself out of bed so as not to wake him, picked her clothes off the floor and threw them on, checking herself in the mirror and debating whether she had enough time to put on her face before resolving to just throw her sunglasses on and deal with it later. She picked up her heels and her purse before she realized her phone was still on the nightstand, freezing as her sigh of realization seemed to make Malcolm stir. No. She was in no mood for their brand of morning-after talk, where he tells her how great last night was and she tries to cover up her reasons for being here in the first place. She held her breath waiting for him to settle, wondering if she should just make a run for it now. Forget the phone, she could always buy a new one, she could…

Malcolm settled back down before she could finish the thought, and after a moment, she slowly let out her breath. She tiptoed back to her side of the bed, grabbed her phone, and headed towards her exit. She didn’t take her eyes off of him until she shut the door, convinced that he was going to wake up and catch her. She didn’t relax until she was in the hallway of the hotel and knew he wouldn’t be able to see her if he woke up. She sighed as she put on her heels and checked her phone for the time, her heart sinking as she looked at the date.

Cripes. It was Monday. The last thing she needed right now was to face an awkward work day with Grace. But wasn’t that just her luck?

It was nearing afternoon by the time she walked into Grace Adler Designs, which gave her the slightest bit of comfort; she had somehow made it to the office around the same time she always did, so she wouldn’t have to field any suspicious questions from the redhead. When she walked in, Grace didn’t shift her gaze from her work, and if Karen was being honest, she didn’t mind having those extra seconds to solidify her mask while she settled into her workspace. As she sat down at her desk, she noticed a giant bag resting by the coffee station and couldn’t stop her curiosity.

“What the hell is that?” she blurted out.

Grace looked up from her sketch to where Karen was pointing. “That,” she sighed, “is a bag of golf clubs. Leo thought it would be a fun thing to do together.”

“God, does he even know who he’s married to?”

It spilled from her mouth before she had the awareness to stop it, hit the air so casually, it gave the illusion that their relationship had circled back to the way it was during the first go around with Leo, where she could say anything and the redhead would praise her for not sugarcoating the truth. But so much time had passed, so many things had happened since then, that it just wasn’t who they were anymore. Karen winced and tried to make things right. “Dammit,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, honey, I shouldn’t have…” she trailed off when she heard Grace from across the office, unable to believe her ears.

Was she  _ laughing? _

Karen shifted her gaze to Grace’s workspace to see the redhead’s smile, unable to put a name to the way Grace carried it. “You know, that is  _ exactly _ what I thought when he brought up the idea,” Grace said. “It’s like that time he got me to go pumpkin picking in the Catskills when we first started dating.”

“Oh god, and he made you go biking and you ended up covered in mud, right?” Karen asked, recalling the memory of Grace telling her all about the trip she took with Leo and Will, how hearing about it took her mind off of the fact that her marriage with Stan had officially shattered.  How were they making light about this now? How were they laughing together? How did this seem so easy? And what could Karen do to keep this going?

“All I wanted was a little HBO and clean clothes. Was that too much to ask?” Grace shook her head. “All these years later, and he still thinks I do things.” Karen tried to swallow her knee-jerk opinions as she marveled at the redhead on the other side of the room. There was something in her eyes that kept shining, even when the air in the room started to get a little heavy with the deeper implications of their conversation, and it completely baffled Karen. Especially since that shine lingered even when Grace egged her on. “Come on. Say it.”

Was it that obvious? “Say what, honey?”

“Whatever you’re holding back right now.”

Karen could have refused, she knew. Grace might have pushed it for a little bit, but eventually the redhead would have realized that the dark haired woman wouldn’t budge, and she’d drop it. But Karen couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d be safe to speak her mind. It was crazy--she knew she probably shouldn’t be feeling it, the way their relationship had been going lately--but it was there. It felt real. So she took a risk.

“It’s just...I don’t know, Gracie, if he was so concerned about doing something with you, he would have picked something that was even remotely in the realm of your interests. Or at least something easy for you to pretend to like. It’s like he still hasn’t taken the time to really get to know you.”

It felt like an eternity, watching Grace slowly make her way towards Karen’s side of the office. Karen felt the nerves start to kick in with each step, felt them grow as the redhead pulled a chair up to her desk and sit down next to her; they nearly overwhelmed her as she waited for Grace to say something, anything. Even if it was tinged with anger, it would have been better than the silence that was closing in around them. At the very least, Karen could try to find a way to spin Grace’s anger if she voiced it. She didn’t really know what to do with herself in the stillness.

Grace took a breath, held it for a moment before she sighed. “I know,” she said softly. “ _ Thank _ you.”

Karen’s eyes grew a little wider. “What?”

Grace couldn’t contain the vindicated smile on her face. “God, I  _ knew _ I wasn’t crazy for thinking that. Will kept telling me to be happy he was making an effort. ‘He may be off the mark, Gracie, but at least he’s trying to spend time with you.’ Trying to get me to find the silver lining or something. And I guess I appreciate that on some level. But come on...we married each other twice, and he  _ still _ can’t figure out that I hate golf? I mean, when did  _ you _ get the hint that I wasn’t that kind of girl?”

Karen made a show of thinking about it, could see Grace smiling out of the corner of her eye as she did it. “Hmm...somewhere around ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Grace Adler,’” she smirked.

She couldn’t help it; her heart swelled as the redhead’s laughter filled the room. “See?” Grace asked in the frenzy of her laugh. “It’s not that hard!” Karen watched her as she settled down, becoming more and more contemplative by the second. She could tell Grace wanted to say something, that she wasn’t sure if she should put a voice to it. But she got Karen to tell the truth; it was only fair that she came clean, too.

“I miss you,” she murmured, nearly a whisper.

Grace’s breathless words threw Karen’s nerves into overdrive. There were a million different ways the redhead could miss her, and she couldn’t even begin to figure out which way she meant. Sure, their friendship was still there, but it wasn’t quite what it used to be; that was a possibility. Maybe she had gotten so deep into her head about her own life, feeling stuck in her marriage with Stan and using Malcolm as a vacation from time to time, that she wasn’t acting like herself. Or maybe, just maybe, Grace was thinking about the chance they could have taken together. Maybe Grace was starting to regret the way they let that chance slide. Maybe she couldn’t keep that to herself anymore.

It was a stretch, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Right?

“What do you mean?” Karen asked, hoping to be let in.

The redhead gave a small shrug. “I don’t know, lately it just feels like I’ve lost you. And I hate it.”

It was still impossible to gauge, and she wasn’t sure how safe she should play it. But she knew she had to do something. “Honey, come on.” Karen grabbed Grace’s hand as a reflex, and started drawing circles she hadn’t drawn in years. By the time she realized what she was doing, she could feel the way Grace relaxed into it and knew she couldn’t stop now. “If you had really lost me, I wouldn’t even be here. I would have cut out a long time ago.”

Grace moved in closer, the way she used to in moments like this. She was close enough for Karen to be able to smell the rosewater perfume she still wore all these years later. “I know that there are some things in our past that feel impossible to get through. And I don’t know, maybe we’re past the point of ever working through it. But ever since the wedding...”

It was the closest Grace had ever come to talking about that night, how they were so close to securing a future just as Stan made his less than triumphant return. It was the closest she had ever come to admitting the repercussions of marrying Leo again. And it made Karen want to fall back into old patterns, comfort the redhead even though she knew there was no real solution that could fix this completely. Back then, it didn’t really matter if it couldn’t be fixed completely; at least they weren’t going through it alone.

So why couldn’t it be that way now?

“Gracie, all of those things...it was a long time ago.” Not reassurance that she was over it, because she knew there was a part of her that never would be, and she knew she could never lie about it. Not a flippant dismissal of Grace’s worries, because they were valid and she felt them, too. Just a statement of fact to be taken however the redhead chose. If it helped them get to a better place, then so be it. “I miss you too.”

Karen could see the way Grace’s eyes were starting to glass over with tears and could feel her own start to rise in her throat. “You do?” the redhead asked, her voice starting to crack.

“Of course! Honey, you’re still my best girl. I still care about you. I still love you.” The blatant wave of relief that washed over Grace’s face was astounding. It made Karen wonder just how cold she had been to her girl since the wedding. She really didn’t mean it; how could she ever freeze Grace out completely? But when your main line of defense against showing your vulnerability comes in the form of brushing people off, there’s bound to be a breaking point for the one who keeps getting brushed off. And in that moment, Karen hated herself for doing that to her. In that moment, she swore to herself that she would never treat Grace like she was any other person, because Grace never was. In that moment, she was determined to fix it.

“Listen, you know I’m not the biggest fan of your husband,” she continued. “But what else is new? It hasn’t stopped me from being there for you before, why should it stop me now?”

Good lord, the way Grace smiled even as Karen was trashing her husband. She had missed seeing that smile, the one that seemed to put all its trust in her, the one that seemed genuine even when there was nothing to smile about. She wished she could see that smile all the time. “Thank god,” Grace exhaled. “Nothing against Will, he does his best, but it’s never quite like it is with you. You always did know how to make the truth feel safe. I don’t know how you do it, but you do.”

“Well, obviously Wilma just does not have my finesse,” Karen smirked.

Grace’s laughter filled every inch of the room. “No, he does not,” she said. “But don’t tell him that.” Her eyes glowed as her laugh died down; Karen felt the light bouncing off of her as she put her finger to her lips in a show of solidarity. She saw the redhead studying her as the office fell silent, and she forgot how good it felt to have her girl’s eyes on her like that. “So...are we okay?” she asked meekly, as if she could feel the weight of the question on her tongue.

“Yeah, honey,” Karen whispered. “We’re golden.”

She was surprised by how true it was.

“You know it goes both ways, right?” Karen felt the way Grace squeezed her hand as she said it, that encouraging little gesture that made Karen’s heart soar. “It doesn’t always have to be you listening to my nonsense. I can help you, too.” Something in her voice made Karen think she knew something. It was impossible; Karen hadn’t said a word to anyone about Malcolm. But she had been around Grace nearly every day for the past eighteen years; it made sense that the redhead started to put her puzzle pieces together. And if she was going to tell anyone about Malcolm, it would be Grace. Grace wouldn’t judge; Grace would lend a sympathetic ear. Grace could give her the truth and still make it feel like everything was going to be okay. She knew she would have to tell someone eventually, that somewhere down the line, it would get to be too much to carry on her own. She knew she would fill Grace in someday.

Someday. Just not today.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmured before pulling Grace into her arms. It was a reflex, something she didn’t even think about before she did it, and in an instant, she regretted that she had done it. But then she felt Grace’s arms slide around her neck, the way Grace relaxed against her like she used to. She felt the weight on her chest start to get a little lighter. She felt something in the air resembling hope.

She felt like she could finally breathe in the office for the first time since Grace reconnected with Leo.

**********

At fifteen minutes to midnight, Karen decided that if the new year was going to be anything like the current one (or, really, any of the last eleven, but who was counting?), she wanted no part of celebrating its arrival.

If it were up to her, she wouldn’t even be at Will’s right now; she would have just holed up in the library at the manse, lingering in her solitude, only being interrupted when Rosario barged in to refresh her drink. But she and Grace had finally gotten to a good place, one that didn’t hurt to stay in day in and day out. Which meant that Grace kept bugging her to spend New Year’s Eve with her. And after all these years, she never quite found the ability to say no to her girl.

Plus, it didn’t hurt that there was no chance of seeing Leo.

Karen couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy, volunteering to work New Year’s Eve rather than spend the holiday with his wife. She saw how disappointed Grace was when she told her about it (which was probably part of the reason why she ended up agreeing to being here tonight; Karen just couldn’t bear to be another person who let her down); there was no way Leo didn’t pick up on that. But she knew he thought he could probably get away with it using gross charm and empty promises. So she wasn’t surprised. To Grace’s credit, she seemed to carry herself like it didn’t matter; she smiled and laughed and looked hopeful for the new year like she was supposed to. But Karen couldn’t stand watching her pretend like that. She couldn’t stand the fact that Grace felt like she had to pretend, that Leo made her pretend. She couldn’t stand that she was pretending, herself. And when it got to be too much, she took her champagne flute out to the terrace for a little peace.

She braced herself against the cold and took a sip of her drink as she looked out over the city. Maybe, deep down, she should be grateful. The last time she was standing out here, her relationship with Grace was hanging by a thread and Karen all but cut it. But ever since that day in the office a few months ago, they found their way back to each other, found the closest thing to their normal that they possibly could and decided to never let go of it again. She was about to go into the new year with her girl; for most of the year, it seemed like that would never happen. All because of some misguided golf clubs.

But still, she lingered at the dead end of her marriage. Still, she was lonely. Still, she had Malcolm’s number living in her contacts (even though she hadn’t used it since she patched things up with Grace), just in case she needed it. Still, she felt stuck. She sighed as she leaned against the rail. 2017 better bring about some changes. She needed change.

She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get it. But it didn’t stop her from wishing for it.

“There you are.”

Karen snapped back into reality and turned to find a bundled up Grace closing the terrace door, champagne in one hand, Karen’s coat in the other. “Are you nuts?” the redhead asked with a smile. “It’s freezing out here. Put this on.” She handed Karen her coat.

“What are you, my mother?” the dark haired woman smirked as she shrugged into it, watching Grace laugh and lean into the rail. “What are you doing out here anyway, honey? The party’s inside.”

“Yeah, I know,” Grace sighed. “I was just starting to think that maybe you had the right idea, being somewhere quiet.”

“So you decided to crash my space?”

The shine in Grace’s eyes rivaled the moonlight. “I can go if you want,” she teased, slowly inching towards the door.

Karen grabbed Grace’s wrist and pulled her in closer. “Come on. You’re not going anywhere,” she murmured, feeling the impact as Grace’s body softly crashed into hers and lingered. “Besides, it was getting a little  _ too _ quiet out here.”

She felt Grace settle against her, rest her head on her shoulder like she had so many times before, and was stunned that it felt just as wonderful, just as important, just as right as it did the first time. She hated that they lost all those months, and she wished she could get them back. But knowing they could fall back into this if they just let themselves helped. Knowing this was always inside of them, deep down, made her realize that there was never a chance of them not finding their way back to each other. Grace would always be her girl. Always.

“Another year over,” Grace mumbled. “Is this where you saw yourself ending up?”

Karen sighed. “Not in the slightest.”

“Me either.”

In that moment, Karen was glad that Grace couldn’t look her in the eye; she wasn’t about to give away how surprised she was to hear her speak like that. Maybe she was wrong; maybe this was the lilt of someone who got what she wanted, only to discover that nothing was ever what you made it out to be. But Karen could have sworn by the tone in the redhead’s voice that they were in the same boat; they knew their choices were terrible, but nobody stopped them from making them. They knew they wouldn’t be completely happy, but at least they wouldn’t be alone. They both thought they could deal with it, but they both reached the end of their rope.

They were both exhausted. But they both finally had a place to rest their head.

“You know, the more I thought about it, the more I was relieved that Leo wasn’t going to be here tonight?” Grace asked the question like it was a sad joke with an even sadder punchline, and it started to break Karen’s heart. “It didn’t really seem right to celebrate a fresh start when nothing feels like it’s going to change.”

“What are you talking about?” Karen asked, even though she knew.

“It’s just not working out with him.” Simple, emotionless, like she just accepted it without question. Maybe she was too tired to fight it (Karen knew she would be if she were Grace; hell,  _ she _ was too tired to fight her own issues). But this was no longer the woman who felt like she was losing everything as she was losing her marriage. This was no longer the woman who called Vegas at three in the morning for a distraction, who needed to crash AA meetings to get a little peace of mind. Grace had done all that before; it didn’t help. And from the sound of it, she knew it was pointless to try all that again. “I mean,” she sighed, “he’s not sleeping around this time, that I know of anyway. But everything else is still there. I don’t know why I expected things to be different.”

“Honey, you had to try.” Karen wasn’t sure how true that was, but it hit the air before she could figure it out.

“Did I, though? I could have run into him and just left it at that. I didn’t have to keep seeing him. I didn’t have to get married again. But I couldn’t have what I really wanted, so I just slipped into something I already knew because it was easier than being alone.”

She didn’t mean it that way. She couldn’t possibly. So much time had passed that Karen couldn’t even be sure of what Grace really wanted. But it didn’t mean that her heart didn’t speed up at the sound of it. It didn’t mean that she didn’t instinctively jump to those conclusions.

It didn’t mean that she didn’t want those conclusions to be true.

“I’m just so tired,” Grace said softly, pulling Karen out of her own head. “I’m tired of him. I’m tired of not doing anything about it.”

“Looks like we’re in the same boat, then.”

“You’re tired, too?”

Karen nodded even though she knew Grace couldn’t see her. “Honey, I’m exhausted,” she sighed. “I am so sick of pretending like there’s nothing wrong with the way I’m living my life. I went back to Stan because I was used to him. There’s no love left. I keep secrets, I lie to myself. I…” Is this really how she wanted to tell Grace? Screw it, it was all going to come out eventually. “Gracie, I’ve been seeing Malcolm behind Stan’s back for years.”

Grace lifted her head from Karen’s shoulder, eyes wide, mouth in a perfect circle of surprise. “What? Kare...why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Well, come on, it wasn’t like we were sharing those parts of our lives since I got back with Stan. And by the time we got back on track...I don’t know, it’s embarrassing. He helped Stan lie to me, I should hate him. But he likes me.” She shrugged. “It’s only when he’s in town, so it doesn’t happen that often. But I can’t remember the last time Stan touched me. And after a while, it just gets lonely. At least Malcolm wants to see me.”

She watched as the redhead studied her, waiting for judgment, waiting for questions she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer, waiting for questions she wasn’t sure she  _ could _ answer. Instead, she felt Grace’s arms wrap around her neck, felt the contact of her body against Grace’s. Instead, she felt Grace’s voice rumble against her ear.

“But he doesn’t deserve how wonderful you are,” her girl murmured. “God,  _ Stan _ doesn’t deserve how wonderful you are. Everything that bastard’s put you through over the years...you’re stronger than I could ever hope to be.”

Karen pulled away just enough to look Grace in the eye. “Honey, no. Don’t talk like that. Your strength is incredible. And not just through the hard times with Leo. It’s always been incredible. We just keep wasting it on people who aren’t worth it.”

Grace furrowed her brow. “Why do we?” she asked. “Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why can’t we reach for something that actually makes us happy?”

There were moments when Karen could actually see the epiphany in Grace’s mind. Her eyes would spark the most beautiful light. Her smile would grow until it became impossible to contain. But she would still try to swallow it, purse her lips together so she could try to speak seriously. Karen saw it all now, and was stunned at how the rollercoaster of the process made her feel so alive. “Okay, you know what?” Grace asked. “It’s resolution time. I am finally going to clean up the mess I made. I’m going to sit down with Leo, and I’m going to tell him the truth. On some level, he has to know this isn’t working.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Karen asked. Sure, the idea of letting go was appealing. But once you actually did, there always seemed to be something that made you regret it. She knew that better than anyone. She wondered if Grace knew it, too.

“Karen, I can’t keep staying with him because it’s easy. I’m going to drive myself crazy if I do.”

“Well, good for you honey. I’m proud of you.”

Grace’s smile started to grow a little wider. “And what about you?”

Karen narrowed her eyes. “What  _ about _ me?”

“What are you going to do to make yourself happy?”

It was such a deceptively simple question. It shouldn’t be that hard to make yourself happy. But decades of experience to the contrary made Karen believe that not only was it impossible, the effort to try wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t about to tell Grace that; more than anything, she wanted Grace to try. Grace deserved to try. Because she wholeheartedly believed that Grace could do it for herself, make herself happy. But when she thought about trying to do the same for herself, that optimism just wasn’t there. “Gracie,” she murmured. “It’s not that easy for me. I’m not getting any younger. The idea of starting over again…”

“Who said you had to go through it alone?” She felt the way Grace tightened her hold throughout her body. “You and me, we’re in this together. I’m not going to let you go.”

God, she sounded so confident, like everything was going to be okay. Maybe it would be. Maybe Karen didn’t give herself enough credit. Maybe all she needed was someone with a little faith. And it made so much sense for that person to be Grace. “You promise, honey?” she asked, just wanting to hear it again.

“Promise.” It was that simple.

Karen gave her girl a half smile. “Then we’re in this together.” She could leave Stan. She could tell Malcolm she didn’t want to see him anymore. She could live through it. Grace believed she could. So she could.

Suddenly, the impending new year didn’t feel so daunting.

A loud, intoxicated countdown from ten started coming from inside the apartment, and Karen and Grace both turned their heads for a moment to get a glimpse of the party that was going on without them. If the redhead wanted to go back inside to join everyone else, she made no move to do so. They didn’t need that party, anyway. They had each other. They had their promise of a new beginning. That was all they needed.

When the cheering from inside signaled the start of the new year, Karen turned her head to face Grace. “Happy new year, honey,” she said, and pressed a quick, gentle kiss to her girl’s lips.

But Grace followed her lips. Grace pulled her in close. Grace drew her hand against Karen’s cheek and said, “Come on, that’s no way to celebrate.” Grace smiled before she brushed her lips against the dark haired woman’s and lingered. Grace kissed like old times. Grace kissed like she was  _ thinking _ about old times.

Grace was making Karen think about old times, too. Maybe she shouldn’t be. Maybe Karen was reading too much into it. But in that moment, it didn’t matter. Because it had been years since she had been kissed like this. And she wasn’t about to let second guessing and lingering doubts destroy this feeling.

When the redhead pulled away, she smirked. “Happy new year, Karen,” she murmured.

Back when Grace would come to her about her boyfriends--about Danny and Josh and Ben and Nathan--Karen could always lump the problems that came along with each one into a distinct category of heartache, like a bargain bin compilation record filled with terrible songs that had the same theme. Leo had so many records, she didn’t know what to do with all of them. And then after her one night with Grace, after sleeping together and waiting for months and trying again and being thwarted at the pass, Karen had a record of her own. Except this one seemed to only have one track, repeating over and over again with lyrics on an endless loop that drove her insane:  _ Love me once, then leave forever. _ After all, isn’t that what happened? They had their chance; they left it behind almost twelve years ago. And all Karen had from it were those words.

_ Love me once, then leave forever. _

But now, Grace was smiling. Now, Grace brought her fingertips to her lips, like she couldn’t believe the kiss at first. Now, the door that had been shut for so long seemed to, at the very least, be unlocked. Now, it felt like Grace took the needle off the record, took the record off the turntable, threw the record away. Maybe Karen was imagining it--only time would tell--but now, it felt like they were finally on their way to something good.

They weren’t even two minutes into 2017, but Karen could already feel a change in the air. And she had to admit, it felt pretty brilliant.


	7. Cruelty Is a Virus

_**“You’re capable of anything, aren’t you?** _   
_**You learned it from someone** _   
_**Someone learned it from you** _   
_**Cruelty is a virus** _   
_**I know, it’s in my blood too** _   
_**You think you know someone** _   
_**But you never know what they will do”** _

_ 2017 _

Karen had never seen somebody so happy to end up right back where they started, the way she saw Grace shine with it now as she landed back in the place she had always called home.

A couple of weeks ago, she walked into the office and saw her girl at her workspace, staring off into space, looking like she didn’t realize she was no longer alone. She quietly settled in at her desk, gave Grace a moment to slowly come back to her surroundings. But by the time she sat down and was facing the redhead, she knew she’d have to get her attention. “Gracie?” she asked softly.

Grace jumped at the voice, shook her head as she processed Karen’s presence and gave a little smile. “Hey,” she murmured like she was trying to hide the fact that she was lost in thought. “When did you get in?”

“Just now. Honey, are you okay?”

The redhead gave a tiny nod. “Yeah, I was just...thinking…” And just when Karen thought Grace had trailed off again completely, “I talked to Leo last night. Told him how I feel about things, about him.” She gave a little sigh. “It’s over.”

Karen wasn’t sure what to do with the lack of emotion in Grace’s voice; she said it like she was asking the dark haired woman to do something around the office she knew would never get done, even though it set off an explosion of nerves in Karen’s core. It was so casual, Karen couldn’t help but wonder if it was a mask, if Grace was trying not to upset herself so early in the day. Or maybe this was just a product of exhaustion. Maybe this was what happens when you’ve tried again and you realize nothing has changed. No frustration, no anger, just resignation. Either way, she motioned for Grace to pull a chair up to her desk like she always did, and waited until her girl was seated directly in front of her before she asked, “How are you feeling about it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really sad about it. So I guess not the way I should be feeling. Right? I mean, last time, I was so despondent.”

“Well, it was different last time,” Karen murmured. “He cheated on you last time.”

“I guess you’re right. I just feel like I should be feeling  _ something, _ you know? But in the back of my mind, I think I always knew it wasn’t going to work. He was still the same guy. So maybe I just started bracing myself for the inevitable. I am...surprisingly okay.”

Karen offered up a small smile and took Grace’s hand in hers. “Are you sure, honey? Because I’m not going to make fun of you if you’re sad about it. He was your husband, after all. Even if he wasn’t really good at it.”

Grace couldn’t contain the laugh that spilled from her lips. “I’m sure. But for the record,” she said, tightening her hold on Karen’s hand, “I already knew you weren’t going to make fun of me. But I wouldn’t have blown your cover with the guys.” The shine in her eyes finally broke through with that, and it finally made Karen believe that she truly was okay.

“So where are you going to go, now that you told him?” the dark haired woman asked, hoping to god Grace was getting herself out of Brooklyn. It crushed her to know that Grace had to move back there, back to a place that didn’t have her in it. The thought of her girl having to stay there for a second longer now that she ended things was unbearable.

“Will’s going to let me move back into my room until the dust settles. I just need to pack.” Grace sighed. “And then I have to move,” she said before she tilted her head and leaned in a little closer. She raised her brow as her voice slid into its sweetest tone. “I could use some help.”

“Honey, I don’t lift things,” Karen deadpanned before trying to bite back the smile that would give her away and failing.

“Okay, then I could use somebody watching me lift things,” Grace laughed.

God, the way she lit up like that. It always took Karen by brilliant surprise, even though she had seen it happen so many times before. She couldn’t believe that someone would have the gall to make that light dim. She wondered if there would ever come a time when it would stop surprising her. She hoped there wouldn’t be.

She tugged on Grace’s hand and pulled her into her arms, felt the way the redhead’s hold wrapped itself around her waist. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she murmured.

The next thing she knew, she was knocking on the door of 9C, ready to take her girl to Brooklyn to shove the last of her belongings into the limo. When Grace opened the door, she saw the way that smile filled the place, the way it bounced off the walls and settled in between them like the greatest gift. And she knew everything was going to be fine.

They had the apartment to themselves; Will tried to be the good best friend and shrug off his plans so he could stick around and help Grace come home, but by the time Karen got there, Grace was practically pushing him out the door to go get drinks with Jack. She was fine, she kept telling him; she had Karen. Will shot a glance Karen’s way, and the dark haired woman couldn’t help but smirk and shrug. “What can I say? The heart wants what it wants, Wilma,” she said with a hint of triumph she couldn’t contain. She didn’t want to gloat--that would be needlessly cruel--but she forgot how good it felt to be the one Grace chose in times like these.

Eventually, Will left. Eventually, Karen and Grace journeyed to Brooklyn and tossed the last of the redhead’s boxes into the limo. Eventually, they got back to 9C and opened up a bottle of wine while Grace lifted things and Karen watched (maybe she carried a couple of boxes herself, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone about it later). Eventually, Grace got tired of boxes and lifting things that weren’t wine glasses and decided to save the unpacking for another day. Eventually, Grace flung herself on the bed that Will never seemed to get rid of (god, no one had faith in this marriage, did they?), and motioned for Karen to join her as she grabbed her glass from the nightstand.

Eventually, Karen did.

The second she sat back on the mattress, Grace linked her arm through Karen’s and rested her head on her shoulder like it was second nature. Karen took in her girl’s rosewater perfume as she sipped her wine, resting in the comfortable silence of the evening until Grace’s voice softly broke through.

“I’m really glad it’s just you with me tonight,” she murmured. “I can guarantee you Will would be fussing over every little thing right about now, because he’s convinced I’m not taking it as well as I’m making it seem.” She drained the last of her glass and set it on the nightstand, lifted the bottle before realizing it was empty and settled back against Karen’s shoulder. “At least you’re letting me breathe tonight.”

Karen took the redhead’s hand in hers. “Because I know you’re okay,” she said simply. Grace was a strong one; she knew Will knew that. But she also knew how hard it was for him to let things be when it came to his best friend. She was honestly surprised he even let Grace kick him out of the apartment tonight, and was expecting him to barge in at any second because he couldn’t go out and enjoy himself for five minutes. Of course that would be her luck. Of course her time with Grace would be interrupted. Of course--

“I love when you do that,” Grace said, breaking the dark haired woman’s train of thought.

Karen furrowed her brow. “What am I doing?” she asked, completely clueless.

Grace lifted her head to meet Karen’s eyes for a moment, before she led their gazes down to their hands entwined. “The circles,” she smiled.

Karen saw the way her thumb was moving along Grace’s skin, and she couldn’t believe she didn’t realize she was drawing them at first. She couldn’t believe she heard Grace bring attention to them. The redhead never had before, never said anything about it one way or another, so Karen just kept doing it because Grace wasn’t saying no. And hearing her girl’s voice wrap around those words now held a sweetness Karen couldn’t have begun to imagine. “Really?” she asked softly. “Because I can stop it if you want me to.”

“No, don’t. It feels like home.” Grace looked into Karen’s eyes and smiled at the surprised look that lived in them. “You feel like home,” she murmured, her voice sinking to her lower register.

Karen thought it was some sort of strange joke at first. It felt, it sounded, just like it did all those years ago, sitting on the floor of Grace Adler Designs with a couple beers and an electric charge in the air. But it was only half a bottle of wine; it couldn’t have affected Grace  _ that _ much. So maybe this was real. Maybe Grace didn’t let go of what they once had, what they almost once were, the way Karen thought she did. Maybe…

“Do you ever think about the last time we were in this room together?”

The dark haired woman felt the shock of Grace’s question throughout her body. Because good lord, what a question that was, with such an obvious answer, part of her couldn’t believe the redhead needed one in the first place. The truth was, she thought about the night they slept together all the time. She thought about it during those stretches of time where she didn’t see Stan. She thought about it when she and Stan were in the same room. She thought about it every time she left Malcolm’s hotel room. She thought about it every time she needed to be reminded that, at one point, she had something so brilliant and passionate and perfect. She thought about it every time she needed to be reminded that, at one point, she knew bliss was real.

She needed the reminder often.

They hadn’t talked about that night in thirteen years. It seemed impossible at first, when Karen did the math in her head. Thirteen years. It didn’t seem like that long ago, but when she realized that they could have been together that whole time, when she realized how long ago the last time she touched Grace like that really was, the reality of it all was staggering. It made her want to cry; she could feel the tears threatening to show. It took nearly all of her strength to keep it in; the little that was left, she gave to the shaky “Yeah, honey. I do” she whispered.

“Me too.” Grace gave a small smile that overwhelmed Karen. “I’ve never had that before, where it was so...I don’t know. Where it was everything I’ve ever wanted it to be.” She started to run her finger along the denim of her jeans, like she needed to focus on something that wasn’t Karen while she was speaking. “I’m pretty sure I’m never going to find that again.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘Never,’ Gracie.” It slipped before she could filter herself, before she could build some kind of protection around her in case the rug was about to be ripped out from under her. She froze, trying her hardest not to look like she was analyzing the implications of what she said, giving into the childish hope that if she stayed still and silent, this moment would disappear.

But Grace met Karen’s gaze and arched her brow and curled her lips into a smirk. Grace let her voice sound like she wanted to play. “No? Why not?”

Karen wondered if Grace could feel the way her heart sped up. Were they really about to go there? Did Grace know what she was doing? Did she realize what she just unleashed in Karen? The door was already open; there was no use in holding back now. “Because it’s closer than you think,” she murmured. The way it floated on the air felt dangerous; the way it floated on the air felt exhilarating.

Grace could have backed off. She could have pretended like she didn’t know what Karen meant (because there was no way Grace didn’t know what she meant; Karen was sure of it). They could have ended this now and come out of it relatively unscathed. Nothing they couldn’t gloss over. Nothing they couldn’t put behind them. But Grace leaned in close enough for Karen to feel her girl’s breath on her skin, close enough to make Karen shiver. “Maybe it’s been under my nose this whole time.”

This wasn’t a game anymore, if it ever was one; Karen heard the way Grace dropped her playful tone, how serious she sounded just now. This was turning into a confessional. And Karen was already in deep; she might as well dive all the way under. “Maybe it’s just been waiting for another chance,” she said, hoping to god Grace wouldn’t fold.

“Maybe it has one.”

Karen never thought she would see the day when Grace would ever open the door they shut all those years ago; she had gotten used to the ache of it to where she could live with it, to where it was dull enough to be ignored most of the time, to where it wouldn’t completely derail her life. But now, Grace had completely ripped the door off of its hinges with a strength that left Karen speechless. She knew that in this moment, she was completely at the redhead’s mercy. And she had to admit, it felt stunning to know that she was.

“And maybe,” Grace continued, that diabolical smirk returning, “I should get us some more wine. Unless there’s some place you need to be.”

It took all Karen had to shake her head. “I’m all yours,” she whispered.

Before Grace left, she pressed a kiss to Karen’s cheek that set off fireworks inside the dark haired woman’s core. Karen couldn’t believe this was real. But she felt the kiss and the butterflies. She heard Grace’s voice. She sensed the possibilities. And the longer she sat with it all, the more she realized that she was finally,  _ finally, _ getting her turn.

The wait was unbearable, thirteen years before they found themselves back in this spot, at the threshold of their future about to walk right on through. But she’d do it again one thousand times over if it always led to this.

She looked out the door, waiting for her girl to come back with the wine, when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket, pulling her out of her reverie. She furrowed her brow, wondering who the hell would be calling her now; Grace was down the hall, Jack had surprisingly kept Will out longer than she expected him to, and no one else could possibly need her. She looked down at the screen.

She saw Malcolm’s name shining across it.

She hadn’t tried to contact him in months; she figured the radio silence would have been a hint. But he was persistent, clearly trying to let her know he was back in town, trying to set something up, trying to throw another wrench into her life. It wasn’t going to happen; she wouldn’t let it. She had everything she needed right now. She had this night. She had her girl. She had hope, the kind that used to peek its head around when she and Grace started to get a little too close, the kind that Grace wasn’t shutting down now. And she refused to be dragged back down again.

But here she was, being pulled back into the cycle she was trying so desperately to break.

Karen declined the call and slid her phone face down on the nightstand beside her, trying to get Malcolm out of her head. She leaned back against the bed, closed her eyes and sighed. Tonight wasn’t supposed to be about this. It was supposed to be about Grace’s fresh start, and she couldn’t stand that she was about to spiral down into her own mess. All because of a phone call she didn’t answer.

But then she heard footsteps coming down the hall. She heard the floorboard by the doorway creak. She heard wine being poured into a glass. And she heard her girl clear her throat before she spoke.

“Refill?”

She opened her eyes and and saw her beautifully smiling girl standing above her like a vision, a bottle of Cabernet in her hand as she waited patiently for an answer she had to know she would be getting. It woke up the butterflies; it gave them an energy they hadn’t had in a long time.

Karen let a half smile play across her face as she held her glass out. “Like you even have to ask, honey.”

She watched as Grace filled her glass and set the bottle down on the nightstand and climbed back into bed. They toasted before she felt the weight of Grace’s body against hers, saw the way Grace’s eyes lit up as they talked. Suddenly, it didn’t matter who was trying to get a hold of her, and it didn’t matter that there was a mess waiting for her the second she left this room. All of that left her mind as soon as she felt her girl curl into her, as soon as she heard her girl’s wine-spiked laugh when she nearly spilled Cabernet on her sheets as she moved and joked about how Will would have exploded if she did, as soon as that laugh got louder when Karen said  _ she _ would have exploded over the waste of good wine. This, the wildfire girl next to her, was all that mattered.

All she saw, all she thought about from then on out, was Grace.

**********

Back when Karen first met Will--when she was still working her way into the fabric of the family she would eventually depend on more than anything else, and she had a little less to lose by seeking such personal help--she had asked him for advice on divorcing Stan. Maybe she should have followed her instincts back then; it certainly would have saved her all the heartache he caused in their years together. But when Will wrote down the name of someone who could help on a napkin, the whole idea got a little too real. So she decided to keep Stan’s ring on her finger, and she stashed the napkin somewhere she hoped her husband would never find it. And she forgot about it for nearly two decades.

Until Grace signed her divorce papers.

Ever since the night Karen helped her girl move back into 9C, she could tell Grace felt free. Free to breathe, free to relax. Free to move in close to Karen without caring about the implications of it all. They already knew the implications of it all. They welcomed them and held them tight, never wanting to let them go. She saw Grace starting to care less and less if people caught her brushing up against her the way she usually did when they were alone together, saw the way Will would give them a look and the way Grace would smile and refuse to explain herself. Because why did she have to? She was separated, she was liberated, she was finally doing what made her happy. Maybe it wasn’t what Will expected, but since when did she have to live her life to Will’s standards? She was a grown woman. And as a grown woman, she chose to spend her time with Karen. Plus, Karen had to admit, it was kind of fun to see Will’s reactions to things he didn’t know they had been doing for years.

Even though the door that was once closed to them was now off its hinges, they were still hesitant to walk through the threshold before Grace’s divorce became final; Karen figured it had to be strange for Grace to start exploring this while she was still technically married, and even though Karen’s marriage was long dead, the dark haired woman knew its existence didn’t help matters. But it didn’t mean they denied themselves that closeness that came with lingering glances and intertwined fingers. It didn’t mean that Grace stopped resting her head on Karen’s shoulder, and it didn’t mean that Karen stopped pulling Grace into her body just to feel the brilliant warmth her girl possessed. It didn’t mean that Grace wouldn’t press her lips against Karen’s cheek, or her neck, or--on one occasion, for a fleeting moment before they realized what they were doing--her lips. They never went any further than that, but Karen didn’t mind it. Because this didn’t feel like the last time Grace divorced Leo. This didn’t feel like it was going to end up with the redhead trying to make one more go of it, because she knew Grace was tired of the cycle. This didn’t feel like it was going to stop before it truly started, because they both knew the mistakes they made back then and were determined not to repeat them. Karen was convinced that they were going to make it this time. And if she had to wait a little longer for them to make it, then what was a couple more months? They had already waited thirteen years; this little bit longer wasn’t going to kill them. This, what they had, was enough right now. Enough to keep Karen happy, enough to keep her hopeful.

Enough to keep ignoring Malcolm’s calls, no matter how often he tried to get through to her.

Then one day, when the October chill had blown away any remaining whispers of summer, Karen had gotten to the office before Grace did, a feat she hadn’t accomplished in the nineteen years she had been working for the redhead. And it put her on edge. Grace usually filled her in those rare times she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it into the office before lunch, and when Karen tried her cell, she didn’t get an answer. Something must have happened. Karen tried not to let her mind go to dark places, but what exactly was she supposed to do when she didn’t have anything to go on? Maybe if she tried calling again. Maybe if she shot a text her girl’s way. Maybe if she left the office and peeked in to some of her regular spots, the coffee shop around the corner, the sandwich place a few blocks away. Maybe if she…

The office door opened, jolting Karen back into reality as she saw Grace walking in. The waves of relief overwhelmed her for a moment while she watched the redhead take off her coat and settle into her workspace across the room. She took a breath and tried to steady her voice. “Honey, where have you been?” she asked, hoping she didn’t come across as worried as she had been.

“Oh. Sorry about that. I didn’t think it would take so long. I just had to take care of something.” They let it hang in the silence for a minute, Karen not wanting to push the issue if Grace didn’t want to talk about it, but hoping Grace would feed her curiosity. And then, like so many times before, like she had a direct line to Karen’s mind, “I, um...I signed the papers. It’s done. My marriage is officially over.”

Karen’s breath hitched. Did she know that was happening today? Was she supposed to? Did Grace tell her? Was it in the calendar she rarely paid attention to? She tried desperately to recall the conversation that could have told her this, but all she saw was the way Grace kept getting bolder and bolder around her. Maybe that was the sign. Maybe that should have told her how close Grace was to being free from all of it. She swallowed down the nerves that were starting to rise and asked, “Are you okay?”

Grace studied her for a moment before she started to smile. “Yeah. I feel lighter,” she said. “I feel better.” She made her way to Karen’s desk, and the dark haired woman could feel the butterflies start to crash into each other harder and harder. “This is wrong, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I be feeling sadder about this?” she asked as she pulled up a chair and sat down next to Karen. It was the question that always seemed to come up during this whole process, in one form or another. Maybe Grace was feeling guilty for not feeling anything, or for at least not feeling the the things she expected to feel.

“Gracie, I don’t think there’s one right way to feel about getting divorced,” Karen murmured as evenly as she possibly could. “As long as it feels right to you, I think you’re okay.”

The light in her girl’s eye grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding. Grace started weaving her fingers with the dark haired woman’s, her touch sparking against Karen’s skin. “This definitely feels right,” she whispered. “Doesn’t it?”

The butterflies in Karen’s core were raging, and by the way Grace’s smile got wider, she could swear the redhead felt the frenzy, too. She inched herself closer to Grace and nodded, the air between them sparkling with electricity. She pulled Grace’s hands up to her lips and pressed a kiss into them. She watched Grace settle into her work for the day and failed to think about anything other than how they could finally start crossing the threshold.

And she knew exactly what she had to do.

That night, she rushed back to the manse and started searching through every inch of the place that she could, looking for a napkin she hid away nearly two decades ago, containing a phone number that could very well be disconnected by now, leading to a man who could very well have stopped practicing divorce law in the nineteen years since Will wrote his information down. She hadn’t thought to do this when she divorced Lyle; she just wanted all of that to be over with as soon as it possibly could be, grabbed the first divorce lawyer she could find, agreed to whatever terms Lyle wanted, and signed on all the right lines. But she was dealing with Stan now. And if Will thought this guy was good enough to go against her husband before, there was no reason she shouldn’t trust his judgment now.

If only she could find the damn napkin.

She searched room after room after room before she finally tired herself out and headed upstairs to get dressed for bed. She walked into her closet for a nightgown when she felt herself being pulled to the hat boxes piled up in the corner. She studied them for a moment, trying to break through a decades-strong martini haze to remember what she did when she came home from that dinner with Will way back when. No, she couldn’t possibly have thrown it in one of those. There was no way.

Although...this  _ was _ the one room Stan never entered. This  _ was _ the one room she could claim as her own. If she didn’t want him to see something, it would make sense to hide it in here.

Well. Maybe if she just went through the boxes before calling it a night…

Karen grabbed box after box, which held things she didn’t remember ever buying or wearing in her life, coming up empty handed until she reached the bottom of the pile. With the last box, she took a breath and held it, bracing herself for the future conversation with Will she was sure she would have, asking for his help once again when she certainly didn't want to. Because of course he’d have questions, now that Grace wasn’t necessarily hiding the way she felt about Karen. She didn’t want to have to defend herself. She didn’t want to…

She opened up the box. Resting in the brim of a hat that had clearly not seen the light of day in nineteen years and would never see the light of day again, was a napkin with Will’s slanted scrawl on it.

Unbelievable.

Karen let out a sigh of relief and cleaned up the mess she made in the closet. She slipped into the nightgown, grabbed the napkin, and retreated to a bedroom that didn’t have her marital bed in it. She locked the door behind her and set the napkin on the nightstand, hoping sleep would come a little easier knowing she had just found the potential key to her best life.

In the morning, she dialed the number Will had likely long forgotten he wrote down for her, hoping against hope that it still led to the person it once did. By some crazy miracle, the guy was still at that number, still practicing law, and was ready to help Karen through this. She set up an appointment to meet with him, started thinking about what she wanted out of this divorce (was there anything really worth keeping from this place? From this marriage? It all seemed so pointless), and braced herself for the wait.

She picked a day that she knew Stan would be out of the country; she didn’t want to sneak past him to file the papers, and she wanted to have time to herself to figure out how to tell him it was over. By the time she was to meet her new lawyer over her lunch break, her husband was thousands of miles away on a business trip with a purpose she wasn’t exactly clear on, and all she had to do was get through the slightest bit of work with Grace before setting everything in motion. She couldn’t believe that Grace couldn’t see the way she knew she was fidgeting in her seat all morning. And if she did, Karen couldn’t believe she didn’t call attention to it. She couldn’t believe she didn’t have to explain herself. She couldn’t believe that she announced she was going on lunch and her voice didn’t shake. She couldn’t believe she left without confessing. She couldn’t believe she got her poker face together in time to meet the lawyer. She couldn’t believe she didn’t break when he handed her a copy of her divorce papers.

She couldn’t believe how easy it was to end over twenty years of marriage. 

When she got back to Grace Adler Designs, Karen saw the door to Grace’s private office was open, heard the redhead rustling around in there, and quickly slid the papers she was hiding behind her back into the magazine on her desk. She tried to calm her nerves before she saw her girl, but she could feel the energy radiating off of those papers getting stronger and stronger the longer she sat in silence. God, she wished Grace would hurry up with whatever it was she was doing back there. But if Grace came back out here, she knew she would probably spill about where she had been, what she had been doing, what she was trying and failing miserably to hide. And she knew she wasn't ready to do that yet. At least not until she talked to Stan. It didn’t seem right to do it any other way; it was the least she could do to let her husband be the first to know that he wouldn’t be her husband anymore. But he wouldn’t be back for a week, and this secret felt too big to keep when it was barely an hour old. She knew it would only get worse as the days went on. If she slipped and told Grace now, would it really be so bad? She would have support then; she would have someone reminding her that this was the right thing, that this was a good idea. She would have someone telling her it would be okay once she severed that decades-old tie for good. She would have someone constantly proving to her that she wouldn’t be alone. But if she told Grace first, and the divorce got messy, did she really want to drag her girl into the middle of it all, just when Grace finally got through her own mess?

Could she really be that selfish?

“Welcome back.”

Karen jumped back into reality at the sound of Grace’s voice and saw her girl smiling back at her from her workspace. She tried to match the redhead’s enthusiasm and threw some hope out into the universe that it masked the turns her thoughts were taking. “Hi, honey,” she chirped. “Did you work through lunch?”

“No, I just grabbed something around the corner. What about you? Where did you go?” It was an innocent question that deserved an honest answer. Karen should have known it would be asked. But she wasn’t prepared for it.

Well. Make your decision, Karen. Tell her. Don’t tell her. Just break the silence somehow. Say something.

“Oh, you know...nowhere special. I just felt like walking around for a little while.”

She couldn’t believe what had just come out of her mouth. But Grace did. It seemed to satisfy her curiosity enough for her to change the subject, and Karen hated that the lie came so easily to her. It wasn’t even that much of a lie; she  _ did _ have to walk around for a little while after she left the divorce lawyer’s office, to clear her head enough to be ready to go back to work. But it didn’t matter; those papers were taunting her from inside her magazine, making her feel terrible for not filling Grace in on their presence. She needed something to get her mind off of this.

And then, as if Grace could hear her thoughts (although not all of them, she hoped), “Will’s going to be out for the night. And I know you’re holed up in the manse by yourself right now.” Karen nearly winced at how Grace was careful not to bring up Stanley’s name. They had made so much progress over the last few months, and she knew they realized it was only a matter of time before he was completely out of the picture (she had already moved out of their bed, moved herself to the other wing of the manse). But it still burned, knowing that Karen was living with him. It was better not to talk about; it made it easier to ignore the remaining obstacles. “I think you should come home with me.”

Karen wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, with the weight of how she spent her afternoon on her shoulders. But god, the way Grace’s eyes glowed with the suggestion, with the promise of a few more hours alone together...how could she possibly say no to her? She took a breath and tried to get herself to relax.

“I think I should, too,” she murmured, a half smile starting to play across her face. And as Grace turned back to her work, Karen’s internal countdown began.

It was only a week, she kept telling herself. She’d only have to wait a week. Then Stan would be back from Costa-Guata-wherever the hell this latest business trip took him, she could sit him down and tell him she was done, she could hand him the papers, and she could retreat back to Grace’s arms and tell her that they finally had the clearance, they could finally start the next chapter. Come on, Karen. You’re strong. You can do this. You can wait seven days.

It wasn’t like anything could destroy them now.

**********

She needed to escape the worry that had invaded her mind, so she crashed Jack’s acting class at the rec center, knowing he wouldn’t care. He’d probably think she was just bored, blowing off work while Grace was at the doctor’s, unable to think of anything better to do. And that was exactly what she needed him to think. Because she wasn’t about to tell him about the text she got from Grace that told her all about how a routine gynecological exam turned into a surprise biopsy of her left breast. And she wasn’t about to tell him that she wouldn’t be able to calm herself down until she got an update, or that the fact that she didn’t know when she’d get an update was making everything worse. So she sat on the bleachers, and she watched him do his thing. She helped one of his students in a way he wouldn’t have been able to and appreciated the unexpected distraction. And by the time Jack’s class was over, she felt her phone vibrate through her purse and fished it out to see two simple words from Grace light up on her screen.

_ I’m fine. _

It was an unusually short message for the redhead, but Karen chalked it up to the relief of knowing she was healthy after all, of not knowing what to do with yourself when you didn’t have to worry anymore. She let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding and typed out a reply.

_ Thank god. Can I see you? _

She stared at the screen for what felt like an eternity, waiting for a response that wasn’t coming, until she was jerked back into reality by the sound of her best friend’s voice.

“You ready to go?”

Karen looked up at Jack’s eager, smiling face and tried to remember what she had agreed to when she was worrying about Grace. Probably some shopping spree she’d be footing the bill for. And even though she got the assurance from her girl that she was fine, Karen wasn’t quite in the mood for throwing money at things neither of them needed. She let Jack help her up from her seat on the bleachers and tried to stammer out some excuse for getting out of it when her phone finally buzzed. She raised her finger to Jack to give herself a moment before looking down at her phone.

_ Meet me at the office. _

“Honey, I think I need a raincheck,” she said as she slipped her phone back into her purse. She saw the disappointment in Jack’s eyes and couldn’t help the small smile starting to play on her lips; she really did love how he always wanted to spend so much of his time with her. She let her hand brush along his cheek for a moment. “Come on, Poodle, we’ll do something fun tomorrow, okay? I promise. It’s just that Grace wants me back at the office.”

Jack furrowed his brow. “Since when do you do work?” he asked.

“Jackie…”

He sighed.  _ “Fine…” _ he drew out. “Take me to lunch tomorrow?”

She pulled him in for a quick hug. “It’s a date.”

When she got to Grace Adler Designs, Karen found her girl sitting at her workspace, stone-faced and staring at the door, and her heart instantly dropped to the floor. This wasn’t the way someone looked when they should be celebrating. This wasn’t the face of relief, of happiness. Maybe Grace wasn’t handed the clean bill of health Karen thought she had. Maybe she didn’t want to get into it over text messages. Maybe she wanted to tell Karen in person. Maybe it was something Karen wasn’t even thinking about. But whatever it was, it made the walls start to close in. It made her whole body shiver with nerves. “Gracie?” she asked as she set her belongings down at her desk. “Honey, what’s wrong? I thought everything checked out at the doctor.” She started instinctively moving towards the redhead, as if being closer to her would magically make everything better.

Grace’s gaze cut through her completely. “Leo showed up at the hospital. They called him when they sent me for the biopsy. You want to tell me why he’s still listed as my emergency contact?” she asked, her voice like ice.

The dark haired woman froze in the middle of the office. What the hell was she talking about? How would she know why they called Leo instead of Will? Or Leo instead of her? It wasn’t like that was her job. It wasn’t like she was responsible for telling them that he’s no longer in Grace’s life.

Except it was.  _ She _ was. She started to remember the day Grace asked her to make the switch; it was the same day she went to the divorce lawyer to draw up the papers she would soon be serving to Stan. When she came back to the office, she wasn’t fully there. Her mind was hyper-focused on the divorce papers and the fact that she was so close to severing that connection once and for all. It jumbled her thoughts, no matter how strongly she felt that it was the right thing. So when Grace asked her to get in touch with the hospital to change her emergency contact, it wasn’t as though she didn’t want to follow through; she just couldn’t process the request with everything else that was living in her head.

She dropped the ball, and she hated it.

Now, Karen raised her hand to her mouth in realization. “Oh my god, Gracie, I…”

“Look, I’ve known you long enough to realize that you’re not the most reliable assistant. But you know about everything I’ve been through with him. All of it. So I thought maybe you’d be able to just do this one thing for me.” God, what did he do to her make her this upset? Because this couldn’t all be about Karen’s mistake. Grace had to know she would never intentionally… “I know you hate him, and I know you hate that I married him again.  _ I _ hate that I married him again. I messed up. I made mistakes. But you didn’t have to rub it in like that.”

Karen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. They had almost two decades together under their belts; Grace  _ had _ to know her better than this. Sure, she’s done a lot of things in her time that she’s not proud of. But she would never hurt her girl like this. She clutched her chest and tried to swallow the emotion rising in her throat. “You think I did this on purpose?” she asked, only managing a whisper.

“I don’t know. Are you telling me you aren’t angry over all the time we lost? Who says you didn’t need to let off a little steam? I mean, let’s face it, it could have been you and me a long time ago, and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.” Grace conveniently left out the fact that she was the one who wanted to wait in the first place, that she was the one who wanted to make sure they weren’t each other’s rebounds even though they both knew it wasn’t the case. But Karen held her tongue for the moment, wanting to let the redhead get it all out of her system before she tried to fix things. “But you went back to him. Even though you said you wouldn’t. That’s not on me.”

“No, it’s not. But going back to your  _ own _ ex-husband after everything he’s put you through is. Good lord, honey. Why  _ did _ you go back to Leo?”

“Why did  _ you _ go back to Stan?!” Grace had lost all control of the volume of her voice, and Karen wondered how long that question had been living inside of her, if she ever considered letting it out before they got to this point. “I mean, my god, Karen...do you know how many times I almost crossed that line, but I was with Leo? How many times I  _ wanted _ to cross that line, but you were with Stan? We could have had so many years together if it weren’t for your husband. But he came back. And you went running back to that life like you actually missed it. Maybe you did.” Grace shrugged. “Maybe all of those things we did were just ways to pass the time.”

Karen scoffed. “Come on, Grace,” she said. “You can’t honestly think that.”

“Why not? Look at the way we’ve been around each other lately. We are all but together; all one of us needs to do is say the word. But I don’t see you making a move to end things with Stan. And don’t think I haven’t seen Malcolm’s name pop up when your phone rings. I don’t care that you don’t answer. He’s still there. He’s still an option for you.”

Karen was stunned. Grace had a point about Malcolm; she wasn’t sure why she never deleted his name from her contacts when it didn’t seem like she would need his number anytime soon. But Stan was coming back from his work trip tomorrow night, and she didn’t want to say anything to Grace about serving him papers until they were actually served, until she could point to that moment and let her girl know that she was never looking back again. It could have been so easy to explain everything, to get them back on track, to clear up the misunderstanding. But Grace’s voice sounded so cold; Karen had never heard it sound so cold before. And it automatically put her on the defensive.

If Grace wanted to get into it, then they were going to get into it.

“You wanna know why I’ve been moving so slow on my divorce? Because every single time a door has opened for us, you locked it back up and threw away the key, and I’m always left trying to figure out how to keep from being lonely. You wanted to wait after we slept together, even though I knew with everything I had that I wanted you. You wanted to wait after we found out that Stan was alive even though--oh, look at that-- _ I knew that I wanted you. _ I have  _ always _ wanted you, Grace; it couldn’t have been  _ that _ well-kept of a secret. And you know damn well that if you didn’t walk away all those years ago, it wouldn’t have been a rebound. Because we weren't looking for a rebound back then, honey. We were looking for an excuse.”

She looked at the redhead, waiting for her to say something. She could see the way Grace was struggling to speak, like she was trying to refute everything Karen just said, and the dark haired woman knew she should probably give Grace a moment. But she no longer had a hold on her patience. And she had too many things fighting to break free from her lips after so many years of being bottled up.

“All those times you almost crossed that line, but you were with Leo,” she sneered, parroting back Grace’s words. “So you mean the way we played house at the Palace when he was in Africa? Right? And the way we were at that cabin in Vermont? If I remember correctly, you told me that was the highlight of your marriage that year. And what about Hawaii? That was real, Grace. You can brush it off as pretending all you want to, but that was real. And you tried to go back to him anyway.” She shook her head. “Who’s to say a couple months or a couple weeks or a couple  _ days _ down the line, you’re not going to be thinking that the third time’s a charm with him?”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“And why’s that?”

Grace’s eyes grew wide. “Because I want to be with  _ you!” _ she shouted. She said it so clearly, it should have made the dark haired woman drop everything. In any other scenario, Karen would have rushed over to her, pressed her kiss against Grace’s, and sealed their fate. In any other scenario, she would have held her girl all the way back to the manse, or all the way back to 9C, or all the way back to anywhere they wanted to go. But everything was coming out now. And neither of them could stop it.

“Do you?” she asked. “Or do you just need someone there to pick up the pieces every time your marriage falls apart?”

The wounded look in the redhead’s eyes nearly made Karen lose her nerve. “That’s not what this is,” Grace murmured.

“Are you sure? Why should this time be any different than the others? Come on. We have been playing this game for so many years. I may not be the most reliable assistant, but that doesn’t stop you from coming to me every time he screws up. He does something to crush you, and I’m always the one to build you back up again. I’m always the one who knows you better than he does, the one who treats you better than he does. I’m always the one thinking that maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize you’re better off without him, and we’ll finally have our chance. But then it always comes back to him. It’s exhausting, Grace. Something’s got to give, because I can’t keep doing this.”

Grace’s voice was barely there by the time she was finally able to speak. “Why are you being so mean?” she asked.

Karen couldn’t look her in the eye; she shifted her gaze to her feet and shrugged. “You always  _ did _ like that I never sugarcoated the truth,” she said.

The silence that surrounded them was suffocating. Karen could feel it close around her throat as she waited for something, anything, to happen. Instead, the weight of everything that had just come out of her mouth finally sunk in, and she was starting to regret the way she said it all. Maybe if she could find her voice again, she could fix it. Maybe they can talk it out, sit down at Karen’s desk and tell each other everything. Maybe they can listen to each other. Maybe it’ll be okay. She tried to take a breath and collect her thoughts when Grace cut her off at the pass.

“I didn’t realize I was such a burden to you,” Grace said, so evenly it made Karen nervous.

“Honey, that’s not what I meant,” the dark haired woman said softly, soon realizing the redhead couldn’t hear her.

“I went to you because I felt safe with you. I went to you because you were easy to talk to. Because it felt like you cared about me. Because you never said no. No one was forcing you to do that, Karen.” Karen could see the way Grace was fidgeting, like she had something on her tongue but wasn’t sure if she should set it free. She could see the way Grace furrowed her brow like she was wrestling with the decision, the way Grace shook her head like she resigned herself to doing it no matter what the consequence. Her process was excruciating; Karen wished she would just get on with it.

“You know, you never once opened up to me the way I did to you,” the redhead finally said. “You always brushed it off whenever we got close to talking about Stan, or about Lyle, or about Malcolm. You never dug deep. You never trusted me. So why the hell would you want to be with someone you don’t trust?”

“Oh, come on, Grace, I trust you!”

“Then take a risk for once in your life! Stop settling for people who don’t give a damn about you! Stop running to people you don’t give a damn about! God...I’m right here! I have  _ always _ been right here!” The frustration in her voice pierced through Karen and nearly knocked her to the floor. She didn’t think anything could feel worse than this. Until Grace gave her a sigh that sounded helpless. “Although maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe we should just finally admit to ourselves that this is never going to happen. Let’s face it, one of us is always going to be out of reach. That’s just how we work. Maybe we should just end this now and move on. Maybe we’ll both be happier then.”

Happier? Impossible. Happiness wasn’t real when it wasn’t with Grace. Even through all of this, through harsh words and harsher accusations, she would rather be wading through the mud to try to get to her than give up. After so many years, she wasn’t about to quit on her girl now. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find the words to say it in this moment. All she could do was watch Grace move like she wanted to go, like she wanted to be as far away from the office, from Karen, as she possibly could. And when she finally found the strength to do something about it, all she could muster was a whisper.

“Gracie, please don’t leave…”

“I need to get out of here.” Grace grabbed her coat and purse and headed towards the door. But before she left, she stopped in front of Karen, looked her straight in the eye, and delivered her final blow.

“Call me when you’re ready to stop hiding behind your husband.”

And then she was gone.

Karen felt rooted to her spot, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t run after Grace even if she tried. The silence trapped her with her thoughts, with the jumbled mess of everything that had just happened. She could barely begin to process it all, and she knew it would be a long time before she could. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it here. She knew she couldn’t linger around the scene of the crime.

When she was finally able to move and she got back to the manse, Karen couldn’t seem to get rid of the waves of anger and sadness and confusion that were making her whole body shake. It almost didn’t seem real, the way everything spilled from them like they were pouring kerosene onto their bridge, the way they each took a match and let it burn from both ends until there was nothing but ash. Nothing that came before this ever felt final. They patched things up when she got back with Stan. They patched things up when Grace got back with Leo. They kept going. They always kept going. But tonight, Karen paced around the first floor of the manse convinced that she had just watched Grace walk away for good. And she was convinced that she would never be able to find her way back to her.

Grace thought she didn’t trust her. It couldn’t be farther from reality--in many ways, Grace was the only one she trusted completely--but there it was. And she couldn’t really blame the redhead for thinking it. They never did go too far deep into her issues with Stan, or why she settled for Lyle. Grace was the only one she told about her affair with Malcolm, but they didn’t stay on the subject for too long. But it was never because Karen didn’t trust her. Karen just didn’t want to throw her mess on top of Grace’s and expect her to deal with it. She wanted to be able to get her girl through her latest crisis before they even began to reflect on her own dilemmas. She wanted to make things easy for Grace. That’s all.

She wished she had a chance to say that.

_ Call me when you’re ready to stop hiding behind your husband _ . It was cruel. It crushed her, and she knew Grace expected it to; the redhead  _ was _ always big on getting the last word. But it wasn’t wrong. She had held off on even starting the divorce process until she knew Grace had finalized hers. She wanted to have that safety net of her mediocre marriage so she wouldn’t have to face being alone if Grace suddenly decided she wanted to give Leo another shot (it certainly wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility, given her history). She was scared of taking that risk, even when Grace felt like the safest home she ever had. She didn’t want to be, but she was. And it cost her.

But she wasn’t just hiding behind Stan; she had a fallback for her fallback, too. And even though she had let Malcolm’s calls go unanswered all year, his number was still in her contacts. He still tried to call from time to time. And if she ever decided to dial his number again, she was certain he would pick up. She was certain he would take her in like no time had passed. She was certain she would feel terrible about it before they met up, and she would feel even worse after she left. But she was certain it would fill the void while she was in it, the way it always seemed to.

She was starting to feel that void opening up a little bit. She started to wonder how quickly he would pick up if he heard the phone ring.

No. Stop it, Karen. You deserve better than that.

But…

No. You do.

She knew, deep down, that she deserved better. But in this moment, it seemed impossible to figure out why.

Karen tried to stop those thoughts from swimming around in her head by making herself a drink and drowning them with it. It helped to settle her body, but it couldn’t touch the frenzy in her mind. She knew she shouldn’t do it. She knew it would only make things worse. But then again, she wasn’t sure how things could possibly get any worse than they were right now. What was one more thing to add to the mess she made of her life?

It was so easy to do. And she was an expert in falling back into things because they were easy.

Karen reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone, opening up her contacts and scrolling until she found Malcolm’s name. She took a breath to steady herself as best as she could. But before she could tap on his name, the phone vibrated against her palm, and the screen alerted her to an incoming call. She almost laughed when she saw the name shining on her screen.

Good lord. Timing was incredible sometimes.

She made her way to the staircase in the foyer and took a seat. She picked up the call and lifted the phone to her ear. She made sure she had a voice to speak. And she sighed her greeting.

“Well, hi, honey. I was just thinking about you.”


	8. Tell Me All About It

_**“So did your broken heart make you who you are?** _   
_**If your broken heart can tell me more about who you are** _   
_**Okay, then tell me all about it”** _

_ 2017 _

“How do you do that?”

“Do what, honey?” Karen asked into the phone.

“How do you make it sound like nothing’s wrong? How do you make it sound like we didn’t just go through hell?”

The dark haired woman sighed. “I’ve had a lot of practice, Grace,” she said, realizing she should have known she wouldn’t get anything past the redhead. “I just...I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Forgive me for trying to protect myself.” She ran her finger against the rim of her glass. “Why’d you call me, anyway? I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me after what happened.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end, and Karen immediately wondered if she had sounded too harsh. She really didn’t mean to be. She was just surprised that she was given another chance, that there was one more opportunity to explain herself, to tell Grace about the divorce papers, to tell her why it was her fault that Leo showed up at the hospital, to tell her how sorry she was for ever making her girl feel like she held grudges, like she wasn’t loved. Because good lord, Grace was loved. Grace had been so incredibly loved from the second Karen first walked into the office. Grace had taken a chance on her all those years ago, defied logic and reason to hire the least qualified woman in the world, gave that woman a home and a family and a sanctuary; how could Karen not give her heart to her in return?

“When I left,” Grace said softly, slowly, “I couldn’t stop thinking about how we ended things, and I needed to talk to someone who would tell me the truth. But that’s always been you. And I don’t really know the protocol for what to do when the person you trust is the one you hurt. I’ve been trying not to call. But I gave in. I couldn’t help it.”

Karen cursed herself for feeling the tears rise so early, when they hadn’t even scratched the surface. “I think your instincts were pretty sharp, honey,” she murmured.

“Maybe.” The redhead’s voice got a little bit smaller, but a little bit hopeful. “Were you really thinking of me just now?”

The dark haired woman took a breath. She couldn’t believe that was a serious question. She couldn’t believe that Grace thought there would ever be a time where she wasn’t thinking about her. But after the way they laid everything out in the office, maybe it was valid. Maybe Grace thought it was easy for Karen to put something like this out of her mind. Maybe Karen’s walls blocked her from view better than she thought they did. “Of course I was,” she said, wishing she could just see the look in Grace’s eyes right now, so she could begin to piece together where her girl’s mind was at, so she could see how honest she should be right now. But she had already been convinced that there was no coming back from this afternoon; what did she have to lose? “I kept thinking about how I lost you, and I kept thinking about how I didn’t want to think about it. And  _ then _ I kept thinking about what I usually do when I don’t want to think about things. You just saved me from doing something really stupid.”

“Malcolm?”

She stifled a laugh at Grace’s deadpanned question, whether it was because she was surprised at the redhead’s bluntness or delighted at the fact that her girl just called Malcolm stupid, she couldn’t quite tell. She tried to compose herself as quickly as she could, realizing how ridiculous it was to be laughing at a moment like this. “Yeah. Malcolm,” she said when her breathless laughter died down. “I’m not proud of it. But it’s where I’m at.”

“You really think you lost me?” The weight of Grace’s voice was too much to bear.

“Haven’t I?” Karen asked, not certain that she wanted to know the answer.

Grace didn’t hesitate. “You could never, Karen.”

There were moments, in the years that she had known Grace Adler, when Karen nearly slipped and let herself sink into her emotions in front of her. They were few and far between, but they were there. Usually, she was able to bite them back before they ever had a chance to surface. But now, after everything that came before them, hearing those words made it impossible to swallow the lump in her throat. Now, she felt the hot sting of tears sliding down her cheek and gave into it, thankful that at least she was alone, that at least she could try to make it sound like she wasn’t this vulnerable.

She wasn't expecting the call. She wasn’t expecting to hear Grace’s voice. She wasn’t expecting to be able to keep this girl in her life. It was all so overwhelming when it crashed into her, she knew she couldn’t speak without falling apart. But of course, Grace was there, just like she always had been, unknowingly giving her the time she needed to try to compose herself.

“I know you didn’t intentionally keep Leo as my emergency contact,” the redhead continued. “I know you could never be that cruel to me. It was just...seeing him again in the middle of all of that. I couldn’t take it. I let myself go to a place I shouldn’t have. I hate that he does that to me. I hate that I did that to you.”

“Gracie, you were upset,” Karen managed, barely above a whisper.

“It shouldn’t matter. Who do I think I am to keep putting you through this? Because you were right, you know. I’ve done it for years. Every time Leo makes me spiral, my first thought is, ‘I’ve got to find Karen.’ You keep me from spinning out of control. You put me back together. And then you watch me go back to him like I haven’t learned anything. I never meant to use you like that.” Grace took a beat before she murmured, “The more I think about it, the more I realize you probably would have had a right to keep my emergency contact the same on purpose.”

She hated the way it all came out earlier; she hated the things she said. She hated that she erased all of the good things about their years together by painting Grace as the relentlessly selfish person she had. Because Karen knew that wasn’t Grace’s intent, and it wasn’t who Grace was in her eyes. And Karen knew that she welcomed this, that she kept welcoming it every time Grace needed her, because she wanted to. She knew that if she had been given a chance to do it all over again, she’d walk the same path every time. She knew she had to make this right.

“Honey, we...we’ve both done things we shouldn’t have,” she said, surprised by how steady her voice was. “This isn’t all on you. I wanted to be there for you. I liked that you trusted me so much; I don’t think anyone’s ever trusted me like that before. And when you told me you wanted to wait when we found out about Stan, it felt like a giant step back we couldn’t make up again. I know you only wanted to give me enough time to be sure. I should have seen that; I screwed up. I never should have gotten together with Malcolm in the first place. I never should have gone back to Stan. I got it in my head that you and I were over before we really started, and...god, I was just so sick of feeling lonely.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” It wasn’t accusatory; it wasn’t bitter. Grace’s question was wrapped in so much empathy, it would have knocked Karen to the floor if she wasn’t sitting down.

“Because why would I give you my problems when you were already exhausted from battling your own? I never wanted to pull you down further. Leo put you through so much, I just wanted you to have a place to rest when you needed to.”

“But I could have helped you, too.”

Karen sighed. “I know. We could have helped each other.” God, would it have been so bad to just let her guard down and let Grace in like that? Was she that used to being on her own that she couldn’t grasp the lifeline that had always been there? When did she become this person? When did the truth become this hard? “Gracie, I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to think that I didn’t trust you. I’ve spent so many years fending for myself that it never really dawns on me that sometimes I don’t have to. I should have told you where my mind was at the first time I tried to divorce Stan. I should have told you more about why I was with Lyle. I should have told you about Malcolm sooner. And I probably should have told you that I filed divorce papers last week.”

She heard gasp on the other end of the line. “You did  _ what?!” _ Grace exclaimed, making Karen jerk the phone away from her ear for a second before a small smile broke out. She always did think those little bursts of excitement were cute, even when they weren’t really appropriate for the tone of the conversation.  _ Especially _ when they weren’t really appropriate for the tone of the conversation. When she pulled the phone back to her ear, it sounded like Grace was moving around while she was talking, some kind of frantic pacing whose intent the dark haired woman wished she could place. “Oh my god, Karen, are you serious?”

“Well, yeah, honey. That’s why I spaced out on switching your emergency contact. I went to Divorce Lawyer on my lunch break, and by the time I came back, I couldn’t really focus on anything else.” They let the silence between them linger for a moment, Karen wondering how much time she should give Grace to process everything before she continued. “Stanley gets back from his business trip tomorrow night. I was going to tell him about it when he got back.” She shrugged as if Grace could see her. “And then I was going to tell you.”

“Oh, Kare...I don’t know what to say. I’m really proud of you for taking that step.”

Karen heard a rustling in the background, Grace’s voice muffled for a second like the redhead was talking to someone else, and the dark haired woman’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach at the thought of Will walking in on their conversation. Because how exactly do you explain something like this without getting lost in so many years of history? And what happens when he eventually finds out? Because of course he’s going to be curious. Of course he’s going to want all the details. Of course he’s going to find some way to pin it all on Karen like this was some horrible plot she had planned instead of something that could have been--that might be still?--so beautiful and so right. Of course it’s going to change the way he thinks of her. Of course it’s...

“So what are you going to do after you tell him?” Grace asked after a moment like nothing happened.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll pack a few things and check into a hotel for the time being. I don’t really want to be in the manse after that.”

“And then you’ll figure out what you want?”

“Oh, honey, I already know what I want,” Karen blurted out before she could stop herself. She winced, unable to believe that she made a jump like that the second it seemed like things were on the way to being okay between them. But hell...she had already spent so much time today thinking she had lost her girl because she didn’t open up; what was the point in holding back now? “I want what I’ve always wanted. That hasn’t changed.”

She wished she could see Grace. She  _ needed _ to see Grace. She needed to see the way her eyes sparkled or faded or did anything to let her know where she stood. But she swore she could hear a smile in her voice when she asked, “Really? You still do?” Like she thought there could be any other option. Like she thought Karen could turn it on and off as well as she tries to make it seem she does. Like she thought there was any happy ending that didn’t have her in it.

“Gracie,” she murmured, “I couldn’t shake this out of me if I tried.”

She could hear Grace release a sigh of...was it relief? “Good,” she breathed. “Because I couldn’t either.”

God, she loved the way those words settled in her ear, the way they nested, the way they rang so sweetly after they left Grace’s lips. She wanted to hear that ring forever, let it hum the soundtrack of her days from here on out. But her reverie was cut short by the redhead muttering “Come on” impatiently under her breath, followed by a sigh and a “Finally.” And she couldn’t help the questions that started to envelope her mind.

“Um...honey? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing, why?”

“You just sound like you’re in the middle of something. Are you sure it’s nothing?”

“I’m fine, I swear,” Grace replied breathlessly. It sounded like she was running. But Grace didn’t run. Grace never did things like that. So what could she possibly... “I just realized there was somewhere I needed to be.”

“Well, where the hell do you need to be in such a hurry?” she smirked as she heard a knock on the door. She furrowed her brow as she got up from the staircase and opened it, her face falling in surprise once her eyes adjusted to the light from the hallway pouring into the darkness of the foyer.

Her nerves exploded throughout her body when she saw Grace on the other side. “Right here,” her girl murmured, her cell phone still to her ear, and her eyes so full of hope, it floored Karen.

“Gracie…” she whispered, unable to say much of anything else.

“I’ve been walking around the city,” Grace said as she was catching her breath and slipping her phone in her pocket, “and I realized how close I was to the manse. And I figured if I hurried, I could get here before we start to say the things we want to say in person.”

Karen tried to bite down the smile that was begging to escape before she realized it was no use. “I’m flattered,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run towards anything that wasn’t cake.”

God, the way Grace’s face lit up as she laughed. The only thing that was better, in Karen’s mind, was knowing that shine was just for her. “Yeah, well...you do crazy things for the loves of your life.”

She didn’t mean it. She said it so casually, she couldn’t possibly have meant it. It was just one of those things that slipped. It was just a joke. It was something that would be taken back in a heartbeat as she fumbled with an “I didn’t mean it like that” or “What I meant to say was” or any number of things that would cancel it out. That’s what it was. It had to be. Karen was waiting for her to pull the rug out from under her.

But the rug kept resting underneath her feet.

Karen reached out for Grace’s hand and led her further into the manse. She could feel the nerves coursing through her faster and stronger with each step. And as if Grace could feel them too, the redhead gave the dark haired woman’s hand a light squeeze before she let her thumb draw circles against the porcelain of Karen’s skin. “Sometimes, I don’t pick up on things right away,” Grace started. “Sometimes, I go into things knowing they’re the wrong thing. Sometimes, I don’t realize what I’ve done until it’s too late. But sometimes there’s still a window, and it’s still open, even if it’s just a crack. Leo may have been a mistake...both times, really...but I’ll give him one thing.”

For someone who seemed to have zero redeeming qualities about him, Karen couldn’t possibly guess what her girl had in mind. “What’s that, honey?” she asked, letting her curiosity take over.

Grace’s lips started to curl into a smile as she brushed her fingers over Karen’s heart. “He helped make it  _ glaringly _ obvious who I really am.” She let her palm rest against Karen’s chest, sighing as she met the dark haired woman’s gaze. “I’m a woman who should have stayed at the Palace and should have believed you when you said you were through with Stan. Who fell for you years ago but was too afraid to do anything about it for the longest time. Who kept denying herself for no good reason. Who wanted to run off with you a long time ago.” The redhead leaned in, rested her forehead against Karen’s as she murmured, “Who  _ still _ wants to run off with you. You know...as long as I still have you.”

“Gracie, you’ve had me from the second you met me.”

She saw the way Grace’s eyes were starting to glass over as she pulled back, and god help her, she could feel herself start to do the same. “What?” the redhead asked.

“No one’s ever taken a chance on me like you did when you hired me. That was it; that was the moment. It just took me a few years to start piecing together that I was gone for you from the start.”

She felt the warmth of Grace’s arms wrap around her neck and nearly buckled from it. “So you’re telling me,” Grace smirked, “that I could have just kissed you nineteen years ago and sealed the deal?”

Breathless laughter spilled from Karen’s lips as she tightened her hold around Grace’s waist. “Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t think we’d feel as victorious at the finish line as we do now.”

“We’re at the finish line?”

Karen nodded. “Honey, I love you,” she murmured. “Good  _ lord, _ I love you.”

“Thank god,” Grace sighed before enveloping the dark haired woman in a kiss.

Karen could feel the charge of Grace’s lips throughout her body, but it felt different this time. This didn’t feel like the times early on in their friendship, when things would go a little too far and they brushed their lips together, exciting for the wrong reasons. This didn’t feel like the Palace or Vermont or Hawaii, unfairly temporary. This didn’t feel like that fated afternoon in the office after a couple of beers and a confession or two, and this didn’t feel like the night that followed it, brilliant and fleeting. This didn’t feel like the way they sealed the promises they made on New Year’s Eve, cautiously hopeful. This didn’t feel like any of that.

This felt the way Karen had always wanted it to. This felt like she had finally come home.

This felt like she would always  _ be _ home, from now on. Because they may have been at the finish line. But they were just getting started.

“Stay with me tonight,” Karen whispered into Grace’s kiss.

The redhead pulled away and brushed a lock of Karen’s hair behind her ear as she smiled. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered back.

Karen led Grace upstairs to her bed, watched as the redhead climbed underneath the covers. And as she joined her girl, she thought back on all the times they had done this before, when Grace was still with Leo, when Karen was still trying to spare herself the heartache of falling for someone who would always be out of reach. She remembered all those mornings after, feeling the crushing weight of the fact that this could not last, that it wasn’t real, at least not in the way she wanted it to be. She remembered how she got used to that weight because at least it was something, at least Grace was there, at least she felt her girl sleeping next to her from time to time. She took what she could get.

But now, they got into bed with a promise of tomorrow. Now, Karen turned out the light knowing that the crushing weight of the fact that this could not last no longer existed. Now, she wrapped her arms around Grace knowing that they would wake up in the morning and start finding their place in the world together, hand in hand. She would leave Stan; she would not fight him. He could have whatever he wanted out of the debris of their marriage. It didn’t matter. Because he couldn’t take this feeling away from her. He couldn’t take away how it felt to have her girl’s head resting against her heart. He couldn’t take away the sound of Grace’s voice when it wrapped around her name. He couldn’t take away the rosewater perfume that always went to her head, that would always go to her head, in the most perfect way. He couldn’t take away the way Grace loved her. He couldn’t touch any of those things.

Which meant that Karen was going to be just fine.

**********

Some days, it didn’t quite feel real. Some days, she was convinced that she was in the middle of some technicolor daydream, and she didn’t want to be shaken awake. Some days, the wait that came before this made her believe that it could all be taken away in an instant. But on those days, Grace would wake her up with a call to say good morning. Or Grace would wake her up by curling into her as the sunlight spilled onto their bed after the nights the redhead was able to run away from home. Or Grace would take her hand in broad daylight as they walked down the street to their office. Or Grace would stop working to study her from across the room, would stop working to pull her in and press a kiss against her lips.

Or Grace would say “I love you” and let it float in the air like a cloud. Day after day after day. And every time Grace would do one of those things, Karen knew that this was true. This was happiness. This was life.

This was sweeter than she ever thought it could be.

Karen waited until the day after Stan came home from his business trip to tell him; as much as she wanted to get it over with, she didn’t think it would be fair to bombard him with divorce papers the second he stepped foot into the manse without the slightest clue that anything had changed. When she did give him the papers, she wasn’t expecting to upend his world with them--on some level, he had to know they were headed towards the end; there was no way he couldn’t--but she thought he would at least put up some semblance of a fight. Maybe their marriage didn’t mean that much to him in the long run. Maybe he was just as exhausted as Karen was. But whatever the reason, it made the whole process quick and painless. By the end of the year, she was no longer Mrs. Stanley Walker.

It felt like she had finally taken the mask off for good.

She had to hand it to Stan; he certainly made sure that she had what she needed to move onto her next chapter. She was able to check in to a hotel, with money left over to still keep from cashing the paychecks Grace always made out in her name. Her girl would spend the night when she could, lounge around the suite like she was anxious to start playing house. Maybe that was why she always insisted on going along with Karen while the dark haired woman looked for a place of her own. Karen never minded having her on her arm as she searched for her new home; in fact, she couldn’t imagine having it any other way. With each space, Grace would murmur into her ear how she would decorate each room, how she would make it clear to anyone who ever set foot inside that this place was unmistakably Karen’s. And if Karen was being honest, it made her want to say yes to every place they looked at. She wanted to thrive in a space that had as much of Grace in it as it had her.

When she found a place she could feel good about--a place not nearly as big as the manse, not nearly as easy to lose yourself and your love in--and she signed the lease, Grace smiled and promised she would spare no expense to make it feel like home. Karen smiled and promised that all Grace had to do was walk through the front door with her to make it feel like home.

She didn’t know if Will had noticed something different in Grace, but she was certain Jack had noticed something different in her and was trying like hell to figure it out. She knew she was carrying herself in a better, lighter way, and she knew it was eating Jack up that he couldn’t put his finger on why. It was agony keeping this a secret from her Poodle. But she and Grace had agreed that it was for the best for the time being. Not because they weren’t sure that this would last; Karen had never been certain of much in her years on this earth, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would never let go of Grace, that Grace would never let go of her. They had been through too much for it to be any other way. They just knew that they couldn’t casually come out with it, because nothing about this journey had ever been casual. It wasn’t as though Grace could just throw it out there to Will in the morning--“Hey, there’s coffee in the kitchen, and by the way, I’m in love with Karen”--and it wasn’t as though Karen could let it slip and expect Jack to let it go just as easily. They were about to change the fabric of their family; in a lot of ways, they had been changing it for years without the guys having the slightest clue. They had to take the care it deserved, the care  _ they _ deserved, when the truth finally came out.

They had a general idea of what to say to them, and they knew that they wanted to tell them together. It was only right to go into this arm in arm, putting on a united front to let them know how real this was. But it wasn’t until New Year’s Eve was approaching once again, it wasn’t until Will started asking Grace if she was bringing anyone to the small celebration he was planning at 9C--just their makeshift family and anyone they deemed worthy of bringing into the mix--that Grace and Karen realized they had actually found their window. The redhead told Will that she would be bringing someone, but she refused to say who.

And Karen sat back and failed to contain her smile over what they had just set into motion.

On the big night, Grace came by the hotel suite to get ready for the evening, maneuvering around Karen’s suitcases and boxes that were patiently waiting to be moved into the permanency of the dark haired woman’s new home at the start of the new year. Karen watched the way she moved like she was floating, like she was already free from the chains of their secret, like she wasn’t afraid of how Will was going to react to their news. And she couldn’t believe that this was the same woman who, all those years ago, was scared over Will walking in on them in the living room of 9C, about to embark on a journey that was long overdue, before they knew Stan was about to block their path. She couldn’t believe that this was the same woman who had never been sure about anything in her past relationships, dancing around the suite as she slipped into her dress and touched up her makeup like she had already seen what was on the other side and couldn’t wait to get there.

She couldn’t believe that the uneasiness she had expected to live in Grace lived in her instead.

It wasn’t that she was uncertain about the two of them; she had never been more sure of anything in her life the way she was sure of Grace. But it wasn’t as if they were bringing an outsider into the fold, one who could just as easily be pushed away and forgotten about somewhere down the road. Karen had been in their lives for almost twenty years. Grace had been there longer. This could never be pushed away, could never be forgotten. This could change the dynamic of what they had come to call family. For better, for worse, it didn’t matter. She and Grace would be to blame. And she wasn’t sure how Will and Jack would take that.

Karen tried to steady her body as she pulled her crimson dress over her body and tried to reach around her back for the zipper. She needed a distraction, something that, if it couldn’t turn her mind off, at least turn it to a different channel. And like she had so many times before, as if Karen had given a voice to it all instead of just let it live inside her mind, Grace was there to offer exactly what she needed.

“God, you slay me in red,” Grace murmured as she came up behind Karen to press a kiss to her neck and zip up her dress. Karen drew her hand up to Grace’s cheek to keep her there, to keep the feeling of her girl’s lips against her skin, to help ease her mind as it thought about what they were about to do. And as if Grace could feel the way Karen’s nerves reverberated inside, the redhead pulled her lips to Karen’s ear and let her murmur quell them. “It’s going to be okay, you know.” She looked into the mirror, locked her eyes with Karen’s reflection and gave a smile. “We’ll be together the whole time. We can do this. I promise you we can do this. They’re our friends. They’re supposed to love us. And they’re going to love  _ us.” _ And in that moment, Karen felt her heart get a little lighter, felt it get a little easier to breathe, felt herself marvel over the wildfire vision who had mastered the art of soothing her in a way no one else had ever figured out how to do.

It was strange, Grace being the one to reassure her instead of the other way around. But as they gathered their coats and purses and made their way to the limo, she realized she didn’t mind it. It actually felt pretty wonderful to know how well her girl could bring her to peace.

“How are you so calm about this?” Karen asked during the ride to Riverside Drive. She had fully expected the redhead to start getting anxious the second the limo pulled away from the curb of the hotel.

Grace’s eyes lit up the darkness as she pulled the dark haired woman closer to her. “Remember New Year’s Eve last year? We were both stuck with things we didn’t want, and longing for the one thing we really did. We promised each other that we were going to fix it. And look where we are now.” Karen rested her head on her girl’s shoulder as Grace pressed her lips to the crown of her head. “Kare...I don’t care if Will freaks out, and I don’t care if he doesn’t understand it. All he’s ever told me he’s cared about is my happiness. And you’re my happiness. So no matter what happens tonight, I know he’ll come around eventually.” She let her confidence in her best friend linger in the air of the limo, and it stunned Karen to realize how far they had actually come from the days when Grace would worry about all the different ways their connection could change, shake, destroy everything they knew. It started to put her at ease.

“Are you worried about Jack?” Grace asked.

Karen shook her head against the redhead’s shoulder. “Jack will be fine. He’ll make a big deal about how scandalous he thinks it is before he starts bombarding me with questions. It’s nothing new. I can handle it.”

Grace gave a contented sigh that turned into a gorgeously low giggle that made Karen’s heart swell. “The look on their faces when they see that you’re my date…” she mused.

“Oh, come on, honey. You know that’s going to be the best part.”

“No. The best part will be  _ finally _ getting to show them how I’ve always seen you.”

It was incredible, the way Grace was able to murmur something like that so softly, like it was something she had said a million times before instead of it being the brilliant bombshell it really was. Karen lifted her head to lock her eyes with Grace’s and saw the excitement, the safety, the love that lived inside of them. It was an excitement, a safety, a love that she had never seen in anybody else. It was an excitement, a safety, a love that she couldn’t believe she got to keep with her from here on out. And she was speechless; she could only bring her lips to Grace’s and hope that her kiss said everything she couldn’t.

From the way Grace kissed back, she could tell that it did.

The limo slowed to a stop outside of 155 Riverside Drive, and they each took a breath before they made their way inside the building. They had fallen into a comfortable silence as they got to the elevator, as Grace pushed the button for her floor, as they rode up to a new year and a new chapter. And when they reached the door of 9C, the impact of what they were about to do suddenly hit. But it didn’t hurt Karen, and it didn’t scare her. It loomed over them, and it felt as daunting as anything ever had, but it didn’t scare her. Because she knew she wasn’t alone this time.

She knew she wouldn’t be alone again.

“Are you ready?” Grace asked.

The dark haired woman smiled in spite of the nerves starting to wake up inside her body. Or maybe it wasn’t nerves after all. Maybe it was simply the anticipation of feeling completely free. Maybe it was the eagerness to finally be honest with the guys, with herself, with the world. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Let’s do this, honey.”

Grace gave Karen’s arm a small, comforting nudge.

Karen gave Grace’s hand a small, encouraging squeeze.

They gave themselves one final moment.

And then they opened the door.


	9. Epilogue

_ 2018 _

“Can I talk to you about something?”

They had no use for the question anymore, at least not in its usual sense. Grace no longer needed to pretend like she was reaching for a last resort, or brace herself as if she was expecting the worst, or tiptoe around the subject before finally getting to her point. They no longer needed to put the needle down on the bargain bin compilation records of their past relationships, dissecting all of their issues track by track; those had been collecting dust on the highest shelf for months now, where they couldn’t reach them, and frankly didn’t want to. Now, the things Grace wanted to talk about were where to order dinner, or if Karen wanted to get a drink somewhere before they went back to the new house and inevitably made another one. Grace wanted to talk about staying in on the weekends and taking Karen out on dates even though the dark haired woman always insisted on being the one who paid. Grace wanted to talk about everything. Grace wanted to talk about nothing. And Karen welcomed all of it. She couldn’t believe how much she embraced the question now.

She couldn’t believe how much Will and Jack had come to embrace  _ them. _

When they had opened the door to 9C on New Year’s Eve, the guys had thought it was a prank at first. They had walked in just as Will asked Grace where her date was. Karen could see the gears turning in his mind, thinking about how Grace must have been stood up once again, or maybe Grace was the one who backed out, or one of a million other options that didn’t have Karen’s name attached to it. But then with a smile, Grace had introduced Karen as her date. And Will and Jack had started laughing, asking the questions that Karen was honestly expecting-- _ You’re joking, right? No, seriously, where is he?-- _ before their faces fell in realization. And she had known that they were in for an interesting night.

Jack had met every single one of her expectations, his exaggerated shock giving way to probing questions she hadn’t really wanted to answer just then. But Will...Will had fallen silent, excused himself from the living room to the terrace and waited for Grace to inevitably follow. She hadn’t known what his silence meant; she could tell Grace hadn’t known either. And while she had been fielding questions from Jack’s excited interrogation, she had just wanted to run after her girl so she wouldn’t have to face it alone.

When Grace had come back from the cold, she said nothing about her exchange with Will. Karen had tried to let it go, but she had known she wouldn’t enjoy herself and this night until she talked to him. She had waited for a bit, wanting to give him a moment to himself before she took her champagne out onto the terrace.

“Honey?” she had asked quietly.

Will had looked at her with what seemed like surprise. She had never known him to be at a loss like this; it was what made him such a great lawyer, what devastated her when she learned that he would be representing Stan and not her the first time she tried to divorce her husband. She hadn’t known what to say to him. But he had spared her the effort by taking a breath and trying to put his thoughts together.

“I had no idea she felt that way about you,” he had said, his voice barely there. “I can usually tell when she gets that way about someone. But I didn’t have a clue.”

“Will, I know this seems out of the blue. But I promise you it’s not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Honey, she came to me every time she had a problem with Leo.” She knew Grace had never told him, but he deserved to know where her heart was at; he deserved to know that she would never dare treat Grace like she was anything less than a queen. “She lived with me at the Palace when he was in Africa. She called me from Cambodia every day; I was the one who bought her plane ticket home. I took her with me to Hawaii after the first divorce because I knew she needed to get away for a little while. I think she’s always had my heart, but it really started to grow into this when she started to confide in me about him. There were so many moments when we almost went there. There was one moment when we actually  _ did _ go there. She and I have been skirting around this for so many years.” She had looked Will directly in the eye and held her gaze. “This isn’t just a whim for me, Will. This has been a long time coming. I love her. I’ve loved her for as long as I can remember.”

“I can’t believe she never told me.” He had sounded genuinely hurt by Grace’s omissions over the years, and Karen couldn’t help but feel for him.

“Maybe she didn’t know how to explain it back then. I know I couldn’t for the longest time. By the time I did, it almost seemed like it was too late. And maybe she thought it would be hard for you to understand. I mean, let’s face it, honey, you and I don’t really have the smoothest friendship in the world.”

He had shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s so bad.”

Karen had tilted her head in surprise. “Yeah? I don’t think it’s so bad, either,” she said softly.

Will had studied her for a moment as he sipped his champagne. “You know, I think there was one moment where I caught you, but I just convinced myself I was seeing things? The day I found out that Stan was alive. My mind was racing, and I knew I had to find you so I could tell you. I just didn’t expect you to be on top of my best friend when I did.”

Karen hadn’t been able to contain the smirk that had started to play across her face, unable to believe that he had seen them when she had spent so many years deluding herself into thinking she and Grace had been safe. “And you didn’t call me out?” she had laughed. “You dropped the ball, Wilma.”

It had warmed her heart to see Will match her smile. “Hey, cut me some slack, I was about to tell you your dead husband was actually alive and well. I wasn’t about to pile anything more on you. Plus, isn’t that just your way sometimes? Boundaries don’t exist, they never have.” He had drained his champagne flute as Karen laughed and moved a little closer to her. “Look, don’t mind me. I’m going to need some time to get used to this. But I can see how much she loves you when she talks about you. And I can see how much you love her. And if this is what makes the both of you happy, then who am I to get in the way of that?”

In that moment, Karen had seen all the reasons why she ended up caring about Will in the first place. They’ve had their arguments, their differences of opinion. Sometimes, calling their friendship dysfunctional was putting it a little too politely. But he was always able to put those arguments and those differences aside and recognize the heart of the matter. And she could see why Grace had leaned on him and loved him for so many years. “Thank you, honey,” she had murmured. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.” She had felt him slide his arm around her as he led her back into the warmth of the apartment, and she had known that there finally was nothing holding her back from her girl.

It had taken a couple of months, but it did seem like Will trusted her with his best friend, like he started to believe that she wouldn’t be one who hurt Grace. He didn’t seem to mind it when they kissed in his presence, when Grace snuggled in close to her. He didn’t seem to mind that Grace barely stayed in 9C anymore, that she stayed with Karen more than she stayed in the place that was supposed to be her home. And to Karen, that meant the world.

“I wouldn’t bother you with this until I was done with it,” Grace said now, pulling Karen back into reality, drumming her pencil against her desk, studying her sketchpad before she shifted her gaze to her girlfriend and smiled. “But I’m trying to sketch out our bedroom, and I wanted to run an idea by you.”

_ Our _ bedroom. Karen hoped it tasted as sweet on Grace’s tongue as it sounded when it hit the air. Because in all honesty, it wasn’t Karen’s bedroom; it was theirs. Grace had slept there nearly every night since Karen moved in, now that Will and Jack knew what they really meant to each other. Grace started leaving more and more of her belongings behind, strewn around the house like they always belonged there. Toothbrushes and hair clips. The curling iron Karen was still confused by, because she had seen the way the wildfire flames of Grace’s hair fanned naturally. Notebooks and pens and magazines. Jeans and sweaters and nightgowns and bathrobes. It happened so seamlessly over the last couple of months that it felt like Grace had all but moved in with her. She had to admit, it felt incredible.

She was just waiting for the feeling to become a reality.

She wasn’t about to push Grace into anything she wasn’t ready for. But the redhead certainly made it seem like she was. Going with Karen to every place she looked at before she landed on this one. Giving her final approval before Karen signed the lease like she could see herself living there. Diving into decorating right away. Calling it “Our” bedroom. Smiling when enough time went by to realize that Karen wasn’t going to correct her. Maybe this was Grace’s way of telling her she was ready. Maybe Grace just wanted her to say the word, to let her know that this was what she wanted, too. Or maybe Grace was just waiting until she finished decorating, until she put so much of her touch on the place that she couldn’t dream of being anywhere else. Maybe she was just waiting for the right time to tell Will about her wishes. Maybe the day when playing house was no longer a game was just around the corner.

Maybes used to make Karen crazy. Now, she loved the way they were full of possibility. Now, she couldn’t wait to see what was coming next.

The future was bright. She couldn’t remember the last time she was able to say that and mean it.

“Well, sure, honey,” she murmured as she walked over to her girl’s workspace and pressed a kiss to Grace’s neck, basking in the way she sighed to her touch. She looked down at the sketch Grace was working on, stunned at the way it was already coming together. Immediately, she could see them waking up in that bed every morning as the sunlight poured in. She could see the way they would never leave that room on the weekends unless they absolutely had to. She could see so many moments waiting to be made in that room. And she wanted to know everything about Grace’s plans. She rested her chin on Grace’s shoulder, and took in the scent of rosewater perfume she could no longer live without before she sighed.

“Tell me all about it.”


End file.
